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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (287488)	5/10/2006 4:20:54 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571808

re: OTOH the rest of the world's oil use would probably continue to climb Parts of the rest of the world are declining and parts are climbing. If the US took the lead in MPG efficiency, as the number 1 auto consumer, I imagine much of the world would follow. re: I think the average car in the US is 9 years old and the average has been climbing. Actually 9 years is the median and it has been climbing, WAG because of better quality. So you would have to accelerate the replacement cycle by less than 100%. A stretch goal, maybe, but could you get close, certainly. re: There are a couple of hundred million cars on the road in the US. Replacing an extra hundred million or so of them in the next 5 years would be very expensive, even if it will lower the price of oil, and you subtract the savings from the cost of the cars. Is the Iraq war expensive? Was 9/11 expensive? I could argue that neither of those events would have happened without our dependence on oil imports. re: Even if having more efficient vehicles on the road will make gasoline cost 1/2 of what it will cost without the change (assume $2 a gallon with the change and $4 without) it would still take over 22 years to make up the purchase price, and that isn't taking in to account the time value of money. Remember, over half those cars would be replaced anyway. Plus you have the economic stimulus to consider, of both the additional jobs to build the cars, and the extra money from lower gas prices, and lower gas usage. Is it a zero cost program? No. Maybe at 6 or 7 years. The main thing is to dramatically increase the MPG efficiency of the fleet... and all the benefits that that will provide.