This study is as credible as all others. Too bad that 25 years (1980-2005) were wasted and even negative with regards to fleet efficiency improvement.

Many of those gas guzzlers, produced between 1980 and 2005, will be around for another 10+ years because more and more people cannot afford to buy newer more efficient vehicles.

Smaller more efficient ICE and 6, 7, 8 speed transmissions + the arrival of many more HEVs, PHEVs and BEVs could change the total fleet efficiency significantly, if we could afford to scrap our 1980/2005 dinosaurs.

Too bad some of you blind Cassandras don't recognize the tripling in fuel economy that has happened since 1973. Back then, when OPEC was beginning to exert its power, the US CAFE was 8-9 mpg. The very best car obtained 14 city and 16 highway. It was the venerable subcompact Bug.

Using exactly the same measuring stick scale it has long been 27.5 mpg. And the achieved CAFE for model year 2009, was 32.6 mpg using exactly that same CAFE yardstick. For the second year in a row the domestic automakers having a better composite CAFE figures than the imports.

So it has tripled or quadrupled from what it used to be. What car other than a super powered megabuck exotica, or a Suburban SUV obtains mileage as poor as 14/16 of the 42 HP VW Beetle?

We are on the verge of an enormous increase in fuel economy; and for the first time technology has advanced to the point that oil substitutes rather than simply squeezing a few more mpg is becoming possible. The Volt is a full family-sized auto, that will obtain 230 mpge city, and 100+ mpge highway with a triple digit combined.

That is roughly a quadrupling of the current 33 mpg CAFE, and double this supposed 2035 impossible target. It is very close to seeing HCCI semi-diesel engines that enjoy both the benefit of diesel mileage, with the half the weight and complexity of a gasoline ICE engine.

Meanwhile the American auto, unlike the rest of the world, has been transformed to a perfectly clean non toxic generator, producing cleaner air out of the tailpipe than going into the intake.

ExDemo,
In 73 I was driving a Fiat that got 30 miles to the gallon.

EXDEMO: Please have another look at the graph. Fleet efficiency went down for 25 years between 1980 and 2005. Somebody must be responsible.

Of course, deniers will maintain that it is government's and CAFE's fault but the majority is stating to know who did it and buying more and more imported more efficient vehicles and (selectively) the more efficient locally produced units.

We have been had for 25+ years. It is time to wake up.

since 1973. Back then, when OPEC was beginning to exert its power, the US CAFE was 8-9 mpg. The very best car obtained 14 city and 16 highway. It was the venerable subcompact Bug.

That's funny I owned a 73 Beetle and got 30/35 mpg.

I've been averaging 60+mpg for the last ten years (2000 Honda Insight), so nothing in this report even mildly surprises me. Given the number of 100+ mpg four passenger cars in the Progressive X-Prize automotive contest, this objective should be considered a breeze.

Stan/ExDemo said;

The very best car obtained 14 city and 16 highway. It was the venerable subcompact Bug.

?? Where do you get your information from??

Bosch L-Jetronic fuel injection boosted the Super Beetle's fuel economy from 25 to 33 mpg.

http://www.superbeetles.com/history.htm

http://www.motorbase.com/vehicle/by-id/211/

There is no valid reason why American auto builders are not producing 100+ mpg vehicles today.

They would weigh about 1000 pounds. The transmission would be Copper wires and a computer. The genset would consist of a Turbocharged diesel, two-cylinder opposed and air cooled, directly driving a generator.

The 92% efficient electric motors would have outer rotors driven by stationary Stators.

Volt has many of the requirements right but their execution has been terrible.

The PNGV programme should have delivered "production-ready" prototypes by 2004 according to the schedule. With Al Gore in the White House, you might have had those cars on the road by now.

Over the 8 years following the PNGV program, the oil industry received much more in tax breaks than the car program cost. The PNGV program cost $2 billion and the oil industry received more than $200 billion over the same amount of time. This is odd, considering from 2000 to 2008, the oil companies made record profits. Exxon alone was the most profitable, taking in $40 billion in profits in just ONE year.

Good point, Peter XX. Has Al Gore been elected, things would have been a lot better now. We (the USA) already had the technology for 80-mpg vehicle way back then...just needing a little refinement and cost reduction...very doable has the right leadership been in place, instead of the pro-oil and pro-military-industrial-complex adm of B*sh and Ch*ney.
Those who own oil and defense contracting businesses reaps untold billions of borrowed money by mortgaging America's future, while the rest of the population are paying dearly for it now...and for years to come...We have squandered precious seed money...capitals that could have been used to develop renewable energy industries that would have employed millions by now...and helped avoid hundreds of billions of USD yearly on imported oil cost, and stave off AGW...etc. etc.

There...sorry I can't help this rant...I am so ANGRY!!!...about B*sh and Companies...

Bush and Cheney's real job in the White House was to continue a policy started in the Reagan years.

“Are you going to pipe that "cleaner exhaust" back into the cabin of your car and prove that is true?”

In the mining industry we use diesel powered carts subterra with particulate filters and oxidation cats all the time. This is the same air that we breathe slightly higher in CO2 and water vapor, you cannot even smell the diesel smell it is totally absent as is even a whisp of smoke. So yes the air coming out of a modern well designed ICE is cleaner than the coal /silica /salt particulate filled mine air going in. in the retail market a pm 2.5 micron DPF cleans the ambient air as most air in the cities has vast quantities of pm2.5 and pm 10 particulates in it not just from ICEs but a lot is from brake pads, and tires are a HUGE source of PM in the cities a modern diesel with a DPF emits less particulate matter per mile from its engine than from its tires. A vehicle that qualifies for UL:EV, SULEV or PZEV technically the air coming out is often cleaner than the air that went in why? Because the catalytic technologies cleaned not only the exhaust but also the air that was sucked in by the engine it is almost impossible to CO poison yourself with modern ice and close coupled 3 way cats, I have run my SUV in the winter inside the garage with the door down to warm up the garage and the trucks interior with no problems at all I have CO detectors in the house and in the work area of the garage none have ever gone off even with the door down for 15 min of idle time.

Roger Pham, right on man! Also, Ai Vin is correct to say "Bush and Cheney's real job in the White House was to continue a policy started in the Reagan years." That's why I wore a button during the run-up to his first election that depicted candidate Reagan with the caption "Scary Monster - Super Creap." People thought it was funny. I was actually horrified, and I still am. It's been 37 years since the oil embargo of 1973, and what's changed in transportation? Not much. Thank god we still have Christmas.