Congress requires massive fuel economy increase

Would Fiat be able to lump all their cars under one umbrella, including Ferrari? That would of course assume that sometime in the next 12 years small Fiats would be sold in the US.

 

It seems hard to beleive that there wouldn't be some kind of acception for the enthusiast/sportscar market.

 

Interesting question.

Alfa already has plans to return, and there are hints that Ferrari may be looking into hybrid technologies (or at least "regenerative braking"...)

2020 is a long way off.

 

I remember a C&D article in the mid/late 70's, mourning the death of the muscle cars due to CAFE & unleaded gas. Now average mainstream cars are faster/better handling. Not as cool as some of those oldies though.......

2020 is a long time away. If only we could SEE the future with 20/20 vision!

 

Build lighter weight cars.

 

Actually, there's a way that most car manufacturers can pull this off today, AND improve performance numbers at the same time! See the following test done by Sport Compact Car magazine:

http://www.eugeneleafty.com/Sentra.asp

 

its perfectly possible and should be done though I don't like that government is forcing it I mean if people wanna drive cars that get bad mpg and pay for gas thats there business personally a ferrari that got 35+mpg or close to that would be sweet. And it could still be fast and beautiful

 

The real answer is to tax the crap out of gasoline, tax emissions and create demand for economical and clean cars. (Politically, this will never happen.) That way you can have a fuel-swilling Ferrari if you're willing to pay, and companies will see the huge market demand for these 35mpg+ cars. Use the gas tax to build a hydrogen fuel inftrastructure -- or whatever technology emerges.

No one likes taxes, but if it's designated for a specific, tangible purpose (e.g., hydrogen filling stations) the backlash would take a back seat to enthusiasm. I think it would feel more like a national project that we could take some pride in.

Or, we can piss away the rest of our treasury on the hunt for WMDs in Iraq and continue to beg the Saudis to pump more oil.

 

Or just have a large gas guzzler surcharge when renewing your license based on the EPA mileage rate for the car, and the miles you drove since your last renewal. This way classics and exotics that are rarely driven are not penalized that much. The resale of SUV's would tank even worse than today, but also even if they were free the lower income drivers couldn't afford to register them either.

 

Yes, that would be a very effective way of taxing emissions. Although odometer tampering would be rampant... but I agree with the 'pay for what you drive' concept.

 

Time to get a Hayabusa which gets 44mpg.

Its fast, exotic looking and my favorite sportbike.

Like I said god forbid some idiot cans supercars for life because of some retarded gas law ill be moving on to bikes.

 

The manufacturers that create exotics have the best engineers in the world working for them. If they are required to create high performance cars that get an average of 35 mpg they will. The reason they don't do this is because at the moment it's more cost effective for the manufacturers to not worry about their high performance cars getting good gas mileage. Cars today make more horsepower and are far more efficient than cars were 30 years ago and thats just a natural progression of technology. If engineers were required to make the same kind of progression it would take much less time before the cars were making even more horespower than they are now but with the ability to get an average of 35 mpg.

Although requirements likes these seem to suck on the surface, the outcome is often pretty positive. It simply pushes the engineers to get creative and come up with better, cleaner, more efficient, and probably even more powerful engines. I have a feeling the next Ferrari supercar is going to blow everyone away by not only being tremendously powerful but with very high MPG as well. That technology will trickle down.

 

If you look at even Ferrari, their mileage values for the V8 models have stayed the same for decades. The F430 still only gets 16 on the highway, but makes more than twice as much power as the old carbed 308. That to me is progress. I was looking at some old articles yesterday and the F430 is faster than the F50 of 12 years ago, while getting 60% better gas mileage. So in 2020 if left unhindered by regulatory shackles, the base Ferrari sports coupe would be faster than an Enzo and still get 25 mpg.

Some sports cars already get decent mileage with exiciting performance. An Elise will push 30 on the highway. A Corvette is rated for 26 hwy. Even the 600hp, 2008 Viper Coupe gets 22.

In 2020 I could see a mostly composite 2200 pound car that gets 35 mpg on the open road. A 10,000 rpm, 400 hp twin-turbocharged 3.0L V8, running on an average of 4 cylinders at partial throttle, able to run everything from E85 to premium unleaded or any mix between. Full electronic launch control, stability control, variable ride height, active aerodynamics, etc. That would be a car that is both exhilerating to drive and satisfies the government.

Who knows, by then even todays amazing supercars and 600 hp Mercedes sedans might be seen as bulbous and wasteful compared to the 2020 wondercars.

 

It is back to the question I should have posed at the start of this thread. I think the answers will determine what strategy each maker uses to go forth.

Perhaps people in the know could elaborate.

1. How do they assign the mileage value for each car? Do they assume a ratio of city/hwy miles. (for example assume a ratio of 60/40 and mileage for each of 16/24 mpg, the weighted average of these two is 19.2 miles/gallon). If so, what is the ratio?

2. Is it based on the numbers of cars sold of each model variation to get the 35 mpg average? (A simple example would be an automaker having only two models, an econobox gets 36 mpg. They sell 98,000/year. The second is a supercar that gets only 15 mpg, and they sell 2000/year. The average is still 35.58 mpg.)

3. Are trucks and SUV's still exempt? What would be the point to strangle cars if a company like Ford and GM sell more trucks than cars now.

4. Are all brands within a corporation used to determine a corporate average, or does each brand have to meet the average? (Is it a GM average or does Hummer/Pontiac/Cadillac/Chevy/GMC/Oldsmobile/Saturn have their own averages).

5. How does diesel come into play? Companies like VW have cars that get over 40 mpg right now, with no new technology and they are cost-effective.

Based on the answers, the business dynamics of the next 12 years could be interesting.

You might see a stratification of cars, the vast majority being very fuel-efficient vehicles people use every day, and high-priced toy/status symbols. But nothing really in between. Car companies would dress up the fuel-sippers so there is a continuous price point spread throughout the US market. When I was in China last year I saw this, either tiny little people movers, or large german sedan (ALWAYS in black). Not much in between.

It might also motivate another round of mergers within the industry, or hasten the emergence of products from developing Asian countries, with willing partners of established brands, assuming they can count these toward their average of course.

 

I just thought of something else.

If this really is the end of the road for the supercars as we know it, won't that make all the current owners' vehicles rise dramatically in value around the summer of 2019?

 

Does anyone find it odd that they continually try to increase the use of ethanol, although it's a considerably less efficient fuel source with marginally better emissions?

I've also heard the current ethanol level is eating through boat gas tanks. Anyone else heard this?

 

Couple of things. This is not a fleet average MPG, it is a models average, so if you make one car line that gets 100mpg it gets averaged equally against the 100,000 suv's. Yes SUv's as a class will have a minimum to meet but it is not 35mpg. What this does is force the manufacturers to give consumers high mpg options but still allows them to sell larger less fuel efficient cars. Also Flex fuel vehicles get counted on gasoline mpg so if e85 is used as the fuel you get something like 40 mpg from the gasoline portion. The fact that e85 is not really available doens not effect the fuel economy rating of the vehicle, just that it can be used.

Taking all of the above into account we can see that automakers are not really screaming. There will be changes for sure. By having minimum thresholds higher mpg can be met but at a technology cost. Since many consumers buy vehicles based on attributes other than fuel economy the manufacturer with the high cost high tech great fuel economy engine lighweight luxury car is at a disadvantage to a similar product where the luxuries are there but not the tech mpg cost. This levels the playing feild and forces everyone to use the best technology. So yes SUV's will be available but they will cost more and the cheaper ones will cost more too so there wont be too many cheaper suvs limiting sales. Consumers will have a lot of higher mog options to choose from.

And yes Fiat can be balanced against ferrari. Lets face it the enzo was reaaallly heavy for what it was. Wouldnt you much rather have a 400bhp 2500lb ferrari. As someone said these standards are going to focus engineers minds in a different directrion. MPG will come with lighter weight as a componant, and that is great for all vehicles, but it will come at a cost, at least the govt standard democratises the cost for all manufacturers.

Still we probably will not see the likes of the zr1 vette for a long time. But what vettes we will have will be lighter faster better handling and more expensive. If e85 is vailable given its octane they may be more powerful too. but this will take a long time to come. A 3500lb 300bhp 30k mustang is going to be extinct though. Get those camaros, chargers amd mustangs while you can. Can you see a 07 shelby going for $1mil at barret in 2050?

 

Bill summary
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=summary&bill=h110-6

Overview of CAFE standards. I didn't see any changes to how they are calculated. So it appears that separate standards are given for domestic cars, import cars, and light trucks. An example of a manufacturer CAFE score in one of the categories is shown also.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview.htm

If Fiat brought over some small cars that sold well and got good mileage or used alternative fuels, it certainly appears as though there could be Ferraris sold too.

 

Not odd at all. Flex Fuel and ethanol are popular with the ignorant and are easier to say than, Just Another Farm Subsidy Dressed Differently.


Boxerman, how would using E85 increase the fleet rating? It's well known that cars running Flex Fuel are LESS efficient than on traditional pump gas.


The real irony is that corn is not an efficient means of producing ethanol compared to say, sugarcane and we can't grow sugarcane in abundance here. We can't grow corn in the neccessary quantities here either, but no politician seems to want to acknowledge that at all.

 

This is actually a very simple solution for companies like Ferrari and Porsche.

Customers are paying HUGE premiums already for a Ferrari, right?

Soo....all Ferrari has to do is create a second line of cars, let's call them Fertinis. Tiny little 60mpg hybrids. Now, nobody would ever want to buy these things....but they would require everyone to buy one (or two) of them in order to buy an 899, or F90, or whatever the heck Ferrari comes out with by 2020.

Then.....their average fuel economy is 35mpg. Nobody will drive the POS Fertini, but all CAFE says is the manufacturer has to SELL them.

 

This occurred to me last night as well, simply make part of being put on "the list" for a new Ferrari a commitment to also purchase X amount of Fiat 500's so that the standards are met.

New Ferrari owners then put the Fiats on Ebay (at a 50% discount) to get rid of them, or just give them back to the dealer for a major service on their Ferrari.

Either way there would be lots of barely driven, high gas mileage Fiats on the used market, to go with the number of barely driven Ferraris.