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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (8410)	5/21/2009 10:56:45 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

As I said you made your own guestimate rejecting the savings cited in the article you posted.

To: Road Walker who wrote (8410)	6/2/2009 11:14:28 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 86356

Increasing mileage by 25% doesn't give you a 25% reduction in fuel used. If your MPG is 25 and your driving a thousand miles you use 40 gallons of gas. If your MPG is 25*1.25 or 31.25 and your driving the same thousand miles you use 32 gallons of gas. That's only a 20% savings, not 25%. Also a 25% higher requirement for MPG doesn't get you 25% higher MPG. Some old cars stick around using up more gasoline (and they'll likely stick around longer if its difficult or very expensive to replace them with large powerful cars). Also some cars would already be passed the new limits and wouldn't have to improve, while others would be better than the current amount and would have to improve less than the improvement in the standard. And all that's assuming that just the standard will be fully effective, and won't just result in the companies having to pay penalties for not meeting the standard (and if the car companies are as shaky as they are now the standards may be changed, or the penalties waived or partially waived, or paid for by government subsidies). And your not counting fuel use by vehicles not subject to the standard. Gasoline by non-covered vehicles (and non-vehicles) is a pretty small percentage but it exists. And then if your looking to the whole fossil fuels for transportation picture you have to consider deisel, coal etc., or indirect use (using fossil fuels to drive processes to make non-fossil fuels such as alcohol. Then there is the fact that to the extent that driving X number of miles is made cheaper by vehicles using less fuel, at the margin you put upwards pressure on miles driven, which reduces your fuel savings, and also creates a relatively small amount of additional demand for oil by using up lubricating oil, and wearing out tires, and cars as a whole more quickly. Considering everything I wouldn't be surprised to see the reduction is more like 5 to 10% than 25%, and that 5 to 10% wouldn't be free, it would be by imposing cars on people that they don't want as much. And also it would be eventual savings, it would take years to reach that level. If you think that an increase in fuel costs and other factors over the years in question would cause people to desire smaller more economical cars anyway, then the cost in terms of giving people cars they don't want as much gets reduced, possibly even eliminated, but so does much of the fuel savings, since you'd just be mandating a change that would happen anyway.