Obama Demands More MPG

yeah but the Bush Admin is out

plusaf, that's nice, Some of us actually have a sizeable load to haul. I don't think a 250# trailer and some extra clothes count. I understand why you needed to do that. It's because your Prius has no capacity or load carring ability. Pulling it from behind was your only alternative.

I'm talking 3200 hundred pounds of concrete. Obviously you've never worked in construction. And you pulled a trailer with your prius? Are you stupid?

Not sure how pulling 3200 pounds of concrete and massive trailers should concern the daily commuter or the average car.
Sure, some vehicles need to be more powerful, but fact is American cars are crap when it comes to efficiency.
The main reason for this is that fuel prices were always lower than elsewhere. In France, where fuel is taxed at roughly 80%, there were already cars doing 60mpg decades ago. Sure, there is an oil-car manufacturer mafia there too, and they still aren't selling the air car they've invented (www.mdi.lu) but at least the cars in Europe don't use V8's when a 4 cylinder will get you there anyway.

I agree with your take on R&D Ricky84. But that's the PULL, we also need some damn hard PUSH to make things happen. We don't have a generation to solve the world's problems anymore... we have about 20 years. HURRY!!!!

It's just more central economic planning which fails.

In the new world economy I think it's more like "local planning". The North American local industry area.

"What will happen if the auto industry can't meet those new regulations?"

Errm...with all due respect, it's time to wake up.

The automobile industry has been buying patents for everything better than their rubbish so they could continue to sell their rubbish.
The solutions have been there for ages and the only reason you don't have fuel efficiency yet and are still using shitty expensive polluting war-creating oil is because you have worthless greedy human beings selling it. As long as they can, they will.

Have you ever heard of Brown's gas? Or the compressed air engine? Or free-energy electromagnetic engines that produce their own energy whilst rotating ?

Search. Find out. Wake up.

Renault is one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world. They own Nissan as well.
Who invented the compressed air engine? One of their engineers, a guy called Pascal Nègre. Were Renault interested? Of course not. Renault were partners with Elf, a massive oil company. The govt taxes petrol at the pump at around 80% in France. Not that France is the problem, oil companies are the problem.

And this is where i have a few concerns: oil companies are owned by bankers. The private bankers who own the US Federal Reserve (which is neither a reserve nor Federal...look it up) financed Obama's campaign. As they financed Hillary Clinton's...McCain's...the other major conservative (i forget his name)...and before them the Bush, Bill Clinton...and just about every other candidate with a chance of winning since the Fed has existed (1913).

Now, tell me: how the f*ck is a banker's employee going to end the oil hegemony when the bankers own the oil companies?

Obama will not put an end to the supremacy of the oil companies nor the private bankers who lend the Americans the money they constitutionally should own. Just as he is not withdrawing these oil-defending US troops from the middle-east, even though he was mainly elected to do so...
Obama is a muppet. A friendly cuddly teddy-bear'ish one, but a muppet nevertheless. I feel sorry for any President who is in such a position as that of the Presidents who 'serve' under the Federal Reserve. They have no control over anything, as any of you would know if they simply read a few quotes from the Presidents of the past, be it Bill Clinton, Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson or Jefferson.

"Give me control of a nation's currency and i care not who makes the laws". The guy who said that was Baron Mayer Rothschild. He pretty much owned the Bank of England. Later his dynasty along with the Rockefellers, the Warburg & the Morgans took control of your currency via the US Federal Reserve.

Anyway, the oil companies elect your Presidents, your Presidents will not hurt the oil companies. If they seem to then use your brain: something else is coming.

Rick, I see your point but in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, BMW was quoted as saying that to meet theese new standards would be very difficult. Do you really think that Ford, GMC, or any others sould care less about what kind of engine they put in the cars? They are in the car making business, period. This air car, on the surface sounds neat but how long will it hold up? MIlage between filling of bottles? Where does one fill this up? Infistructure? Can a home compressor fill it ? Will it come with one if you don't have one? How much time to fill? (Compared to a gas stop.) Horse power? I might need to get on the highway this year. Explosion potential? That much pressure, no matter if it's not combustable, could create quite a mess. A filled oxygen bottle, made with armor plate steel, will go through a cinderblock wall without any problems. I would need to see alot more data on this before I would go running to by such a thing. I understand that Tata of India is perhaps going to bring this car into production. It will be interesting to see. They look cheesey on the outside. Perhaps that's why they haven't made it over here to the U.S.. Beyond that, you can't compare little horse and buggy roads designed by the Roman's years ago to the highway system here in the U.S.. It just doesn't work. Top speed in some of theese little towns is 25 mph. and that's flying given the conditions. A tiny car might very well work in those conditions. Once out of the city...... well..... you take your life into your own hands. I don't see very many Smart cars on the highway. In town? Yes. Some people have common sense. Others? Not so much.

europe, europe, europe...blah blah blah.

if it's so great....move there already.

exactly how do you see renewable energy jobs being created.

GM produces 20 vehicles that make a profit. Of those, 11 are trucks and SUVs. Studies have also shown that the Prius is not a profitable atuomobile for Toyota. Why are we pushing car companies to produce something that does not allow them to sustain profitability?

This isn't about Europe being better than the US. This is about Europe proving that it can be done.

People get along just fine in their Peugeot's, Fiat's, Opel's, etc. Why must Americans travel in cars 3 to 5 times larger/heavier?

The new jobs in a green economy will come from continuously researching and improving new technology -- employment for scientists, researchers and field specialists, designing and building the infrastructure all over the nation and manufacturing these new energy gathering devices (solar, wind, thermal, wave, etc) which bring construction, engineering, architecture jobs -- not to mention the many specialties involved, and then training a new generation workforce to manage and maintain this new infrastructure (teachers, professors, instructors, maintenance people, workers at these energy stations). There are countless fields that will benefit.

Currently, none of those jobs exist. Instead, the US is sending trillions of dollars out of the country to OPEC nations who are the ones that get to employ their own people in extraction and processing of the oil that the US then consumes.

Cars will still be built in the US. Those jobs don't need to go anywhere. People will still buy cars. In fact, there will likely be a boom in car sales once electric cars become mainstream. There's the incentive of paying less to run your automobile and then there's the conscious incentive, the one that makes people feel good because they know they're helping their country by buying cars and energy made in the USA and helping their planet by reducing CO2 output.

Obama is simply requesting that the US catch up with the rest of the world in fuel efficiency while this new renewable energy economy unfolds. This is just a step along the way.

If anything, the US as the world's only super power should be leading the way, not playing catchup.

Cars will still be built in the US? Really? how's that going to work with GM and Chrysler on the ropes? GM is now talking of leaving Detroit and moving overseas.

You're living in fantasy land if you think "green living" is the answer to turning this economy around. There's one simple reason some of these ideas never caught on before...money. Why don't more homes have solar power if the technology has been available since the 70s?

Liberals need to make up their minds with their "scare everyone about the environment so we can enforce our agendas on Americans" mentaility. Just a few years ago, ethanol was the answer. Corn prices went up, supply for the American consumer went down, fuel efficiency wasn't much better...now ethanol companies are going out of business. When will it stop?

California has been the leader in creating "green living" and jobs and all that...why are they in the worst economic position in the US? This isn't a sustainable lifestyle.

"Cars will still be built in the US? Really? how's that going to work with GM and Chrysler on the ropes? GM is now talking of leaving Detroit and moving overseas."

GM and Chrysler make shit cars. Let them die.
The combustion engine is one of the worst things that has happened to humanity. For over 100 years they have kept making the same inefficient polluting design. They can go to h*ll as far as i'm concerned.

And where the cars are made is up to the manufacturer. Let me give you one very good example.
Pascal Nègre, inventor of the www.mdi.lu compressed air car, has decided that he will not sell the license to make his car unless the manufacturer makes AND sells the cars in the same country. This defeats moving labour to China or elsewhere. A plain, simple, knock-out solution.
So: cars that are sold in the US will be made in the US. Cars sold in India will be made in India. Cars sold in China will be made in China.
The price will therefore be set by the local cost of labour & living.

Wait, that's not all.
Retailers are the factories. That's right, the car is MADE where it is sold. Each retailer is a mini-factory.

Guess what, the car is cheap. In France it would cost 3500 euros (5000 dollars?). And the subsidy in France for cars that clean is 5000 euros. So in theory you should even receive money for buying one of these! :-D

The retailer is the maker so he knows how to make them, and therefore how to fix them. He also has the parts. He can whip up a motor for you for the price of just a few parts from some 'normal' manufacturer.

All it took? The decision of one man.

So don't tell me that GM or any other major manufacturer with all their billions couldn't do this if they wanted. These manufacturers have been intentionally hiding great inventions such as the water engine or air engine precisely so they could go on selling their crap. Let them die. Just inform the people that real solutions exist.

@mgerlach2:

Now who's fault is it that American automakers are falling apart? Their fault.

They've dragged their feet and people moved on to buying foreign cars with better fuel efficiency and durability.

My Dad owned American cars ranging from Cameros to Oldsmobiles to Fords. In the late 90's he liked the direction that Toyota was going so he got a Corolla. He still has it, and it still drives like new. Oh, and guess what? It has better fuel efficiency than many of the cars American automakers are releasing in 2009.

My first car was a Ford Orion. It had a huge tank of gas that I frequently had to fill. That was ok, gas was cheap. Who cared right? My current car? None. I live in the center of a city where I can walk anywhere or take the efficient public transit available if I need to go further. If really I need a car, I rent one.

The reason why renewable energy never caught on? You're right: money. But not from the perspective you're suggesting.
The big money oil companies have been buying out patents and putting up fights in the courts to enable the oil economy to go on just as the tobacco industry did in the decades prior.

Once the ball gets rolling (it officially has with Obama's policies), people will begin buying into renewable energy. The more people buying into it, the more affordable it gets for the next generation of buyers.
At a point in time when the majority of the US is run on renewable energy, it's going to be expensive to use oil and nobody will really care.

Imagine going to other side of the world, finding oil. extracting it from the ground, carrying it half a world away to the US, processing it, distributing it....not to mention the trillions of dollars and priceless lives of American soldiers to wage wars to protect America's interests in oil. That sounds expensive... and it is! The only reason anybody can afford oil is because the majority of the population buys into it.

Being a pioneer isn't the easiest task in the world. It's unchartered territory. People don't like change. They like the security of the known.
Finally, a President is in place that will help people along, and flip the situation by offering incentives to installing renewable energy to a point where it becomes affordable to build the momentum to make it even more affordable.

In the 70's and later, it was both expensive and inefficient to use solar cells for more than a calculator. Solar cells today are becoming a lot more efficient, to the point of being able to provide for the majority of the needs of many homes across the US. There's money to be made now so the research is advancing and the technology is rapidly improving. There's demand for renewable energy: that's where business will move towards.

So now we got the reverse side of the scenario above:
People install solar cells on their roofs: the sun comes right to them. Energy is consumed at the source where it's gathered.
No hauling oil across the oceans, processing it and distributing it in trucks and trains across the country.

Finally: a green economy isn't a sustainable lifestyle? ... and consuming billions of barrels of a finite resource every week is sustainable?

I sense an underlying theme to all these issues with GM and Chrysler that aren't affecting foreign car makers...UNIONS. They've had such a strangle hold on the US auto industry for so long that innovation has been dragged down with it.

A green lifestyle is not sustainable in the US. California has cities that are the "greenest" cities in the US...yet they're all broke. The state of California is bankrupt to the point it can't pay out income tax refunds. And that state has some of the highest taxes and most stringent environmental policies in place....including car emissions standards. The rest of the US is now on the California train to failure. At least they're going down with less pollution with other areas though. Thanks liberals.

California has many issues that are completely unrelated to this issue. In addition, before California made the effort to move to green tech, they were considered the worst offenders of CO2 production. L.A. is a city built around cars for example, without a pedestrian scale downtown and paralyzing gridlock. You don't go from worst to first in a few years.

I'll just let you have the last word because it's becoming apparent that you can't understand economies of scale and will never understand how One Country is very different than a minority percentage of one city, or even one state buying into an idea.

The change is happening on a global level in terms of flipping the switch on green energy and off fossil fuels.

Good luck buying gas in 10, 15 years. $4 p/g will seem like free scoop day @ BaskinRobbins

Fuel efficiency increasingly equates to security (on a national scale).

this hardly qualifies as national defense

But it does qualify as a step taken to protect human health and the environment. Hence the Environmental Protection Agency - a federal organization.

So I guess Obama (and his appointees) have every right to regulate vehicle emission and mileage standards.

I am waiting in anticipation when we are totally weaned from fossil fuels and our carbon footprints are minimized, only to realize that global warming is not a result of man-made causes, but solar causes. Solar spots have been quiet prevalent in the last few decades in a similar way it did almost a thousand years ago. Also, sun spot activitiy was at a minimum at mid 2nd millinium (circa 1450s) when a small ice-age struck northern europe and northern North America (greenland/iceland-viking record).

When we stop depending on foreign resources to keep our society alive we will have national security.

When we have distributed resource production (solar and wind on every rooftop) then we will have national security and an un-killable infrastructure.

Solar and wind have nothing to do with defending against an army.

It removes our foreign interest in securing the supply fields of oil production... i.e. The Middle East.

Therefore we spend more time building up a DEFENSIVE military using High Technology solutions that continue to make all other military technologies worthless against us.

Our so-called National Guard can actually be HERE guarding our nation instead of sitting in Iraq or Afghanistan guarding an Oil Well. I think cybexg is looking at the BIG picture.

And all Obama has done is call "bullshit" on the american car companies and the big GM Country Club executives who have phuqed our country for the last 50 years in order to keep us slaving away for sub-standard vehicles and shiny new "body styles".

It's all indirect though, which takes it out of his hands and into the market.

I agree that our National Gaurd and the rest of our armies should be here gaurding us, but deciding on tough emission and gas mileage standards are not a direct decision on armies being pulled out.

Cybex is seeing "A" bigger picture but still the decision remains out of his hands, which was my point. Even though I agree with the big picture.

Obama can't call bullshit on the american car companies while at the same time subsidizing them. That's what has phucked our country up for the last 50 years. Not allowing the markets to function and having government intervention and not letting businesses fail that are mismanaged. Government needs to get out of the way and let the smaller companies or other companies that do a better job at managing the publics interest have a chance.

I agree with you that not letting car companies fail is bad long-range strategy.

I think they should.... I wasn't really very happy when Reagan revived Chrysler.

If they make crappy products they should be allowed to die. That's how it should be.

NOW... what we've had for the last few decades however has been: "Here you go consumers... we've now made the Chevy Crap-mobile in BROWN as well as White and Black" so you have some choice and the new 2009 model has a really cool hood ornament.... don't like the Chevy models... try this exciting Mercury model (same car with different logos).

The whole "electronics suites" in the cars was just a marketing scam to try to get us to buy the same old-junkers with the illusion that they are somehow cutting edge technology....

We need REAL technology development instead of lazy engineers sitting around remodeling existing plans. No more prancing about at shows showing off "concept cars"... now it's time to start taking risks and building products we WANT to buy.

Tesla will wipe the gas-car market out if they can survive the constant undermining and subterfuge of the industry they're trying to crack into.

Have you seen the Tesla Model S? Sweet!!

The Tesla model IS sweet. I think supply and demand will take care of that. Once we have govt out of the car business, then the market will tell the car makers what we will and won't buy if that's what we want.

Rock,

limited thinking on your part.

National security is as much about preventing conflict as it is about winning a conflict (perhaps even more). Anything to help reduce our dependence upon oil helps to give us more room to navigate wrt to national security.

Cybex,

wishful thinking on your part.

That still isn't defined as such under national defense/security.

Of course in a big picture those things will help out but that's the same as guiding the markets to make a better economy for us. Yes, it's a good idea but it's not the presidents jobs to figure out the market. Two different points.

You see i'm agreeing with you on one, but not on the point I was making.