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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (155501)	1/23/2006 10:28:01 AM
From: slacker711	Respond to of 793756

As for mileage standards, if you put SUV's and light trucks into the cars category tomorrow, you would see a dramatic droppoff in demand as those vehicles went up in price to compensate for the increased taxes that the manufacturers would have to pay And THOUSANDS of well paid workers put OUT of work. The very vehicles you wish to attack are the ones that AMERICA most successfully produces and sells. Destroying peoples lives and taxing those that HAVE to have a larger vehicle is not my idea of how to successfully solve a problem. Who said anything about doing it tomorrow? All of this stuff gets phased in. If Bush had been willing to take a new look at the energy policy in the winter of '01, we would be seeing those higher mileage standards starting to hit right now. I'm guessing that oil prices would be substantially lower right now if Bush had been willing to think a bit outside of the Republican box back in '01. Probably the most likely way that automakers would react to putting SUV's into the car category is to make more hybrid versions. The initial version of the Ford Escape gets over 30 miles per gallon....and there is quite a bit more that they could do to take more the vehicle even more fuel efficient. I know that Cree (full disclosure, I'm invested) is talking about creating a prototype of the Escape hybrid that gets another 10-15mpg due to its use of SiC schottky diodes. The technology is available now, but the automakers are ridiculously conservative with new technologies so it will probably take years to convince them....unless they have some sort of substantial incentive to do research along those lines. Slacker