Comments on Infosnack Headquarters: CAFE Standards Analysis

Surely it is somewhat engineering-expensive to mak...

2008-08-16T00:32:28.674-04:00

Surely it is somewhat engineering-expensive to make cars better, but I think that isn't the problem. The more likely situation is that Joe Lunchpail dun be wantin' his car to be reel big and gots lots of horsepowerz.

So, the car companies could just tack an extra $1,500 onto the cost of the car, and, boom, they're in the clear, which avoids the whole point of improving global efficiency and yet collects very little in taxes.

That's per car, so if your corporation were 1 mpg ...

2008-08-15T14:36:48.254-04:00

That's per car, so if your corporation were 1 mpg off of the standard and you sold 100,000 units per year, that's $5.5 million dollars in penalties, out of $200 million in profit (average profit per vehicle is between $1000 and 3000 for US and Japanese automakers respectively).

It's only a two percent penalty so it's a little small. I guess it depends on how expensive it is to just upgrade a car to get 1 MPG better. $55?

"It's certainly no less arbitrary than the current...

2008-08-15T10:04:57.623-04:00

"It's certainly no less arbitrary than the current $5.50 penalty per 0.1 MPG for not meeting the current CAFE."

Why do they even have a rule like this, if the penalty is meaninglessly small? You could drive a car that got 1 mpg and the penalty would be nearly insignificant compared to the price of the car, so how could this penalty actually change behavior? (It's rather like if a parking ticket cost $2 a day...there would be no reason whatsoever to feed the meter.)