In April of this year the Secretary of Transportation (Mary E. Peters) proposed an interesting plan: She calls for an acceleration of last year’s Congress enacted CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards by a whopping 25%. For those in need of a refresher, CAFE is the sales weighted average fuel economy, expressed in miles per gallon (mpg), of a manufacturer’s fleet of passenger cars or light trucks manufactured for sale in the United States, for any given model year. Fuel economy is defined as the average mileage traveled by an automobile per gallon of gasoline (or equivalent amount of other fuel) consumed.
With average fuel prices surpassing the $4 per gallon mark across much of the nation at the time of this article’s writing, there are few who wouldn’t mind seeing Peters’ plan of 35.7 mpg for cars and 28.6 for trucks/ SUVs by the year 2015 come to pass. Unfortunately many auto-insiders have retorted to this ambitious proposal stating that Peters is clearly out of touch with the development lead times that must be taken into consideration before any automobile sees the light of day.
To put into perspective the type of lead times we’re talking about here, while the 2008 model year cars are on showroom floors, the 2009s are already standing in line waiting for their debut in the next couple of months. The 2010s are already fully designed, engineered and developed (waiting only on the assembly line schedule) as are the 2011s with only room for minor tweaks and color changes.
In this line of thinking, many are scoffing at such efforts at legitimate increases in fuel economy standards as mere political ploys of a governmental department looking to save face. Whether or not this is actually the case is yet to be determined but one thing is for certain: We are witnessing the early stages of the dangers in our dependence upon fossil fuel. Perhaps the pressures of an economy based on the trade of crude oil will be enough to inspire the auto industry to pick up the proverbial pace a bit.
