Understanding the President’s CAFE announcement
19 May
(Editorial note: I was doing so well moving to shorter posts. I fail miserably in achieving that goal here. I went the comprehensive route instead. I promise to return to shorter posts in the future. Buckle up – this is a long ride. I hope you find it’s worth it.)
(Update: There’s an important correction in #3 below. The estimated job loss for the option I think most closely approximates the Administration’s proposal should be about 50,000 over five years, rather than about 150,000 over five years. I apologize for the error.)
There is not yet much data available on the President’s CAFE announcement. Luckily, we have a huge base of analysis that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) did in 2008 that allows us to infer a lot from what was announced. Here are the specific data points we have from the President’s announcement:
- The average fuel economy standard will be 35.5 mpg in 2016. That’s a weighted average of all cars and light trucks sold in the U.S.
- Assuming that the Wall Street Journal’s reporting is accurate, they would require cars to hit 39 mpg by 2016, and light trucks to hit 30 mpg by 2016.
These fuel standards are the implementation of a law proposed by President Bush in January 2007, and passed by (a Democratic majority) Congress and signed by President Bush in December, 2007. The Bush Administration developed rules to implement the law and brought them right up to the goal line, but did not finalize them before the end of the Administration. The Obama Administration has now significantly modified the Bush rules.
Technically the Administration is today announcing that they will release a new proposed rule. While the news coverage makes it sound like this is a done deal, this is the beginning of a regulatory process, not the end. Still, the starting point is extremely important.
In developing the Bush proposal, NHTSA developed six options. I will show you four of those. Conveniently, what we know about President Obama’s proposal lines up almost perfectly with one of those options. This allows us to use NHTSA analysis of this option to make some initial estimates of the effects of the President’s new proposal. As always, you can click on the graph to see a larger version.
This graph shows the fuel economy requirements, in miles per gallon (mpg), for a nationwide fleet average. In actuality there will be two standards, one for cars and one for light trucks (SUV’s are light trucks). It gets even more complex than that, because the standard adjusts for vehicle footprint (the shadow made by the vehicle when the sun is directly overhead). This incorporates an element of vehicle size in the requirement as a proxy for safety. If everyone just moved to tiny little vehicles, we would get much better fuel economy, but we would also have more highway fatalities. So the NHTSA methodology balances fuel efficiency and safety. The “S” in NHTSA stands for Safety. For reasons that I fail to understand, safety sometimes gets taken for granted in the Beltway policy debate relative to fuel efficiency, environmental benefits, and economic costs.
The four lines are from NHTSA’s analysis for the rule that we (the Bush Administration) did not quite finalize:
- Green is the baseline – what the standard would be if the Administration did nothing.
- Yellow shows the Bush proposal. This line is the result of a methodology that tries to maximize net societal benefits (= total societal benefits minus total societal costs).
- Blue shows a different methodology, in which the standard is raised until total societal costs equal total societal benefits, so net societal benefits equals zero. This is the highest you can go before the model says that the rule is making society (in the aggregate) worse off, taking into account all costs and benefits. This line and option are labeled TC=TB.
- The red line is the extreme upper end of what NHTSA thinks can be done if all manufacturers use every fuel economy technology available, without regard for cost. No one suggests it is a viable policy option, but it is a useful reference.
The purple dot is what we know about the Obama proposal. We only have a 2016 figure, which is conveniently right in line with the TC=TB option analyzed by NHTSA last year. So I’m going to make an assumption that the Obama proposal roughly matches this blue line in the intervening years. When I compare the separate numbers we have from the Administration for cars and light trucks with the six NHTSA options, they line up in a similar fashion with the TC=TB option, reinforcing my view that this is a solid assumption. This means I will use the NHTSA estimates of the TC=TB blue line option as a proxy for the effects of the Obama proposal. Technically, someone can quibble that it’s not precisely identical, but until I see data to the contrary, that’s just quibbling.
This means the Administration can dismiss the entire analysis that follows by saying their proposal differs from the TC=TB option. I cannot disprove such a claim if they make it, but my response would be, “How different? Show me.” I feel quite comfortable using this option for my own analysis, and will do so until presented with an alternate set of numbers by the Administration. (I helped coordinate much of this policy process for President Bush in 2007 and 2008.)
Here are ten things you might want to know about President Obama’s new fuel economy proposal. I will reference some tables and analysis from the NHTSA analysis done for the near-final Bush rule. This is a long list, so this summary will let you skip around as you like:
- It’s aggressive.
- Rather than maximizing net societal benefits, this proposal raises the standard until (total societal benefits = total societal costs), meaning the net benefits to society are roughly zero. This is not an invalid framework for making a policy decision, but it is unusual. It represents a different value choice.
- NHTSA estimated that a similar option would cost almost 150,000 50,000 U.S. auto manufacturing jobs over five years.
- NHTSA guesses that under a similar option, manufacturers will make huge increases in dual clutches or automated manual transmissions, a big increase in hybrids, and medium-sized increases in diesel engines, downsizing engines, and turbocharging.
- It will have a trivial effect on global climate change.
- The national standard = the California standard (roughly).
- The auto manufacturers got rolled by the Governator.
- Granting the California waiver means California has leverage for next time.
- In Washington, EPA is now in the driver’s seat, not NHTSA.
- Today’s action will accelerate EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources. While Congress is futzing around on a climate change bill, EPA is getting ready to bring their “PSD” monster to your community soon.
You can see this from the graph above. Within the Bush Administration we considered a range of options that would raise average fuel economy by between 1% per year and 4% per year. Our near-final rule would have raised this combined car/truck average about 4.7% per year from 2010 through 2015. My math shows that the Obama proposal would raise this same measure about 5.8% per year through 2016. That’s really aggressive. (In this post all years are Model Years for vehicles.)
Note: The press is reporting that Team Obama says they’re doing about +5% per year. They’re measuring starting in 2011. I use 2010 so I can compare Bush and Obama.
2. Rather than maximizing net societal benefits, this proposal raises the standard until (total societal benefits = total societal costs), meaning the net benefits to society are roughly zero. This is not an invalid framework for making a policy decision, but it is unusual. It represents a different value choice.
The NHTSA analyses look at a range of benefits to society, including economic and national security benefits from using less oil, health and environmental benefits from less pollution, and environmental benefits from fewer greeenhouse gas emissions (this is new). They also consider the costs, primarily from requiring more fuel-saving technologies to be included by manufacturers. NHTSA assumes these increased costs are passed on to consumers. More expensive cars mean that fewer cars are sold, which means that fewer auto workers are needed. NHTSA calculates economic costs to car buyers and to society as a whole, and job losses among U.S. auto workers.
A standard rule-making methodology is to look at all the costs to society, and all the benefits, and make them comparable (by converting them into dollar equivalents). You then ask, “What policy will maximize the net benefit to society as a whole, taking into account all costs and benefits?” This is the approach NHTSA used in building the yellow line.
The blue line represents a different approach. (See the TC=TB line on Table VII-6 on page 613 of the NHTSA analysis.) You take the same analysis of costs and benefits, but instead ask, “How much can we increase fuel economy before the costs to society as a whole outweigh the benefits to society as a whole?” This results (in theory) in no net benefit (and no net cost) to society, but allows you to maximize the fuel economy subject to this constraint.
The Obama Administration’s numbers are in line with this latter approach. It’s not wrong. The Obama approach is quite different. It represents a different value choice, in which a higher priority is placed on the benefits of increased fuel economy, and lower priorities are placed on increased costs to car buyers and job loss in the auto industry.
Update: I was sloppy and missed the note on page 585 which said that table VII-1 shows cumulative job losses. Thus, the total over five years is 48,847 (which I’ll write as “almost 50,000″), and not the 148,340 I earlier calculated. I apologize for the error, and thank James Kwak for catching my mistake.
See Table VII-1 on page 586 of the NHTSA analysis. NHTSA estimated that the TC=TB option, which I’m using as a proxy for the Obama plan, would result in the following job losses among U.S. auto workers:
|
MY 2011 |
MY 2012 |
MY 2013 |
MY 2014 |
MY 2015 |
5-yr total |
|
8,232 |
24,610 |
30,545 |
36,106 |
48,847 |
148,340 |
Compared to the Bush draft final rule, this is 118,000 37,000 more jobs lost.
Since I know this table is inflammatory, I will anticipate some of the responses:
- This is an estimate for the job loss from the TC=TB option analyzed by NHTSA in 2007. This is the closest proxy for the Obama rule, and I’m convinced it’s a good proxy until someone demonstrates otherwise. But technically, it’s not a job loss estimate for the Obama proposal.
- This estimate was done in a different economic environment (late 2008), and before the U.S. government owned 1.5 major U.S. auto manufacturers. My guess, however, is that these changed conditions should push the estimated job loss up from the above estimate, rather than down.
- There’s a false precision in the above table. It’s just what NHTSA’s model spits out. I draw this conclusion: The Obama plan will increase costs enough to further suppress demand for new cars and trucks. This will cause significant job loss, and probably in the 150K 40K range over 5-ish years, with a fairly wide error band. I don’t put any weight on the precise annual estimates.
4. NHTSA guesses that under a similar option, manufacturers will make huge increases in dual clutches or automated manual transmissions, a big increase in hybrids, and medium-sized increases in diesel engines, downsizing engines, and dialing back turbocharging.
NHTSA does a detailed analysis of the costs of new technologies to improve fuel efficiencies, and they talk to the manufacturers and examine their product plans. They then guess what technology changes the manufacturers might make to comply with a higher fuel efficiency standard. Here are their estimates for increased penetration in MY 2015 for various technologies under the TC=TB / Obama proxy option. This is from Table VII-7:
|
Baseline |
TC = TB (Obama proxy) |
Increased penetration |
|
| Dual clutch or Automated manual transmission |
8% |
60% |
+52% |
| Hybrid electric vehicles |
0% |
24% |
+24% |
| Turbocharging & engine downsizing |
11% |
24% |
+13% |
| Diesel engines |
0% |
12% |
+12% |
| Stoichometric gasoline direct injection |
30% |
39% |
+9% |
It would be great it if a commenter could educate us a little on these technologies.
5. The proposal will have a trivial effect on global climate change.
I always chuckle when elected officials boast about the number of tons of carbon that a policy proposal will not inject into the atmosphere. The White House is doing so today, emphasizing “a reduction of approximately 900 million metric tons in greenhouse gas emissions.” That sounds like a a lot, but who the heck knows?
We are fortunate that NHTSA analyzed the climate effects of all six options in terms more amenable to our comprehension. Here are their estimates for baseline, the Bush option, and the TC=TB (Obama proxy) option. This data is from Table VII-12 in the NHTSA analysis:
|
CO2 concentration (ppm) |
Global mean surface temperature increase (deg C) |
Sea-level rise (cm) |
|||||||||
|
2030 |
2060 |
2100 |
|
2030 |
2060 |
2100 |
|
2030 |
2060 |
2100 |
|
| Baseline |
455.5 |
573.7 |
717.2 |
|
0.874 |
1.944 |
2.959 |
|
7.99 |
19.30 |
37.10 |
|
Bush |
455.4 |
573.2 |
716.2 |
|
0.873 |
1.942 |
2.955 |
|
7.99 |
19.28 |
37.06 |
|
TC=TB (Obama proxy) |
455.4 |
573.0 |
715.6 |
|
0.873 |
1.941 |
2.952 |
|
7.99 |
19.27 |
37.04 |
OK, this still doesn’t mean a lot to me. Let’s take some more data from the same NHTSA table, and see the change from the baseline of not raising fuel economy standards at all. Now we can see the direct climate benefits of these proposals:
|
CO2 concentration (ppm) |
Global mean surface temperature increase (deg C) |
Sea-level rise (cm) |
|||||||||
|
2030 |
2060 |
2100 |
|
2030 |
2060 |
2100 |
|
2030 |
2060 |
2100 |
|
|
Bush |
–.1 |
-.5 |
-1.0 |
|
-.001 |
-.002 |
-.004 |
|
0 |
-.02 |
-.04 |
| TC=TB (Obama proxy) |
–.1 |
–.7 |
–1.6 |
|
-.001 |
-.003 |
-.007 |
|
0 |
-.03 |
-.06 |
Ah ha! This is useful information. As you can see, the effects are trivially small:
- Both options would reduce the global mean surface temperature by one-thousandth of one degree Celsius by 2030. The Obama option would reduce the global temperature by seven thousandths of a degree Celsius by the end of this century.
- The effects on sea level are too small to measure by 2030. By 2100, the Obama proposal (technically, the TC=TB proxy) would reduce the sea-level rise by six hundredths of a centimeter. That’s 0.6 millimeters.
Hmm. That’s not too much, especially when you consider this is the policy that will affect the #2 source of greenhouse gas emissions in our economy. (#1 is power production.)
In anticipation of some pounding by the climate change crowd:
- These are NHTSA’s calculations using the MAGICC model, not mine. I’m just reporting their results.
- If you have different estimates, I’m happy to consider posting them for comparison. I am less open to arguments about why the MAGICC model is wrong, or why NHTSA’s inputs into that model are wrong. I don’t know the model well enough to debate the points.
Again, the point is not the precise estimates. It’s the order of magnitude. Please don’t tell me this model is flawed. If you disagree with these calculations or this model, give me some numbers you think are better, and that lead to a different conclusion.
Imagine if the President had instead said today, “This new fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions rule will slow the increase in future global temperature seven thousandths of a degree Celsius by the end of this century, and it means the sea will rise six tenths of a millimeter less than it otherwise would over the same timeframe.” It loses some of its punch, no?
Similarly, when the Supreme Court pushed in Massachusetts v. EPA toward regulating greenhouse gases from new cars and trucks to protect the public health and welfare from “endangerment,” I wonder if they understood that an aggressive proposal would reduce the future sea level increase by 0.6 mm?
6. The national standard = the California standard (roughly).
Technically, the Administration will be setting two standards: one for fuel economy, and another for CO2 emissions from tailpipes. In theory, the two will (basically) match up, hand-waving past a lot of second-order things like flexible fuel vehicle credits and new vehicle air conditioning standards.
During the Bush Administration there was a tussle between California and the federal government. California wanted a waiver to be able to set their own standards for CO2 emissions from cars and light trucks. Another 13 or so States wanted to follow a new California standard. The proposed California standard was significantly more aggressive than anything discussed in Washington.
We argued that having multiple emissions standards would be inefficient. Auto manufacturers would then have either to make cars to meet two different standards, or just dial up the fuel efficiency on all vehicles, so that the California standard would become the de facto national standard.
The President resolved this today by (basically) setting one national standard for fuel economy, and a roughly parallel standard for CO2 tailpipe emissions, that approximate the higher California standard. California is happy that they got their higher numbers. The auto manufacturers avoid the inefficiencies of multiple standards, while having to eat (actually, pass on to customers) the higher costs of making even more fuel efficient vehicles.
7. The auto manufacturers got rolled by the Governator.
The heads of several auto manufacturing firms stood with the President today and smiled. They lost this fight. They pushed incredibly hard during the 2007 legislative battle, and during the subsequent regulatory process, for a fuel economy standard that rose about 2% per year. They dug in hard against a growth rate greater than 3% per year, and told us that 4% per year would destroy them. Our near-final rule averaged about 4.7% per year. The Obama rule averages about 5.8% per year. Either way, this is way, way more than the auto manufacturers wanted.
They had no leverage, of course, and an outcome similar to this was predictable after the November election. So they’re putting the best face they can on it. Interestingly, the press statement from Ford CEO Alan Mulally does not say that he endorses the specific numbers proposed by the President, but instead (emphasis is mine):
Today’s announcement signals the achievement of a crucial milestone – an agreement in principle on a national program for increased fuel economy and reduced greenhouse gases. …
This national program will allow us to move forward toward final regulations that all stakeholders can support. We salute the cooperative efforts of the Obama Administration, the state of California, environmental groups and others that played a constructive role in this process.
The framework of the national program will give us greater clarity, certainty and flexibility to achieve the nation’s goals. We will continue to work with the federal agencies to finalize the standards that we are committed to meeting.
Tip for reporters: Ask Ford (and the other manufacturers) if they support the specific numbers proposed by the President today. The statement above is trying to leave Ford wiggle room to argue for smaller numbers in the rulemaking process. If the auto manufacturers wiggle, then you have a repeat of the situation from last week’s health care announcement.
And of course, 1-2 of the U.S. auto manufacturers are now controlled by the U.S. government.
8. Granting the California waiver means California has leverage for next time.
As I understand it, the Administration is technically granting California its EPA waiver, and California has agreed not to invoke it for this process (MY 2011 – MY 2016). Assuming the waiver doesn’t get un-revoked (can it be?) by a future Administration, this means that next time around California will begin the process with the authority to set its own tailpipe emissions standard.
This means that, when we do this again in about five years, California holds all the cards. To quote the Governor in another context (wait for it), “I’ll be back.” California will have leverage to set its own standard, which means they can again dictate the national standard. The Obama Administration has moved the primary decision-making locus for future vehicle fuel efficiency rules from Washington DC to Sacramento.
9. In Washington, EPA is now in the driver’s seat, not NHTSA.
The Administration has said there will be two rules. NHTSA will set a fuel economy rule, and EPA will set a tailpipe emissions rule. We know that EPA will always be more aggressive than NHTSA. This means that, to the extent Washington remains involved in future standards (see #8 above), the primary decision-maker becomes EPA rather than NHTSA, since auto manufacturers will have to comply with the more aggressive of the two. NHTSA does not become irrelevant, but the bureaucratic strength is definitely shifting.
This bureaucratic power shift suggests a higher priority will be placed in the future on environmental benefits, and a lower priority on economic costs and safety effects, as we see with today’s proposal.
EPA is in the midst of taking comments on an “endangerment finding” that is a huge deal in the climate change policy world. If the EPA Administrator finds that greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks “endanger public health and welfare,” then it starts a regulatory process. It appears the President is prejudging the result of this regulatory comment process: “… the Department of Transportation and EPA will adopt the same rule…”
As a former colleague has taught me, a proposal to regulate greenhouse gases (under section 202 of the Clean Air Act) would greatly accelerate when greenhouse gases become “subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act. This would trigger ramifications that reach far beyond cars and trucks. As early as this fall, greenhouse gases could become “regulated pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. Once something becomes a “regulated pollutant,” a whole bunch of other parts of the Clean Air Act kick in, and EPA is off to the races in regulating greenhouse gases from a much (much) wider range of sources, including power plants, hospitals, schools, manufacturers, and big stores.
One of the scariest elements of this is called the “Prevention of Significant Deterioration” permitting system. In effect, EPA could insert itself (or your State environmental agency) into most local planning and zoning processes. I will write more about this in the future. It terrifies me.
Thanks for making it to the finish line!
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Let’s see the President, wife, mother-in-law, dog, 2 kids and luggage for a weekend at Camp David get into a fuel efficient “small” car and drive to the mountains instead of taking a non-fuel efficient helicopter! I’m sure the government will be keeping all of the huge and armoured black SUV’s they use as a motorcade for the President, or candidates or Pelosi and the rest of the Beltway figures. It all is a bunch of talk that I predict will never become ” a nation full of small cars.” Clearly WE DON’T WANT SMALL CARS. One of the best examples of good engineering, style, and a well run car manufacturer is Honda. The American made car is not #1 anymore. And the “Global Warming” argument is just hogwash. So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty – We need car manufactures to make good, solid cars, of the size we are driving now and that can do it at a profit. The government and tax payers do not want to run private enterprises. Let Capitalism work !!!
Some of the technology coming (and here is a number of cars, including the BMW N54 twin turbo six cylinder, GM Ecotec 4 cylinder, and Ford’s new EcoBoost V6) is direct fuel injection (DFI) and low pressure turbo-supercharging.
Basically the direct fuel injection uses a fuel injector that is located in the cylinder head, usually adjacent to the spark plug. The intake track is ‘dry’ all the way into the cylinder. This allows some really interesting valve timing (and even lean burn capabilities if the fuel quality is consistent enough). By opening an intake valve sooner (while the exhaust valve is open and the piston is returning to top dead center on the exhaust stroke) you can reduce emissions.
BMW believes they receive about a 15% increase in fuel mileage based on an engine w/o DFI and of similar power ratings. By coupling the DFI with low pressure turbocharging (less than 15 psi of boost) you can further increase performance (or reduce engine size).
It’s pretty slick technology – and here’s a wiki link for those insomniacs in the group: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_direct_injection
Excellent points. I, too, wish we had more information on the proposal. That’s why I tried to caveat my presentation as carefully as I could.
The “5% annual growth” (from 2012 to 2016) tends to reinforce the TC=TB path as a useful proxy, as does their chosen 2016 numbers for the separate car and light truck standards. In addition, the Administration is selling this as more aggressive than what was previously proposed, which at least suggests its higher than the Bush proposal.
Finally, these curves all tend to end up with a similar shape. This isn’t a graph of data, but instead of a proposal, and the proposals tend to work out as fairly smooth curves. So your “could go in either direction” is true, but I think one direction is far more likely than the other.
As I tried to express in the post, I cannot prove to you that TC=TB is the most useful proxy, and maybe I won’t even convince you. About all I can say is that it is to me the most reasonable assumption for what they have proposed, and I look forward to seeing more data when the Administration provides it.
Thanks for keeping me on my toes, and thanks for reading.
I believe that NHTSA considers that a “national security benefit of using less oil.” Please see the first paragraph of (2) above.
I think they (NHTSA) do take this into account. Their analysis is fairly sophisticated. You can see for yourself — I’ve linked to the analysis. (Warning: 5 MB PDF file.)
Thanks for reading and contributing.
Doh….Proofreading problem.
The comment about manual transmissions SHOULD read:
“Manual transmissions suffer from some power loss associated with decoupling the engine from the drivetrain during a shift (as does an automatic), but the coupling is a direct coupling, not a viscous one. Thus, the loss is much less overall than with an automatic.”
One other quick point about weight: There’s a certain amount of energy required to move a given mass around. You can talk about efficiency, etc., but the final power output from the engine must be capable to move that mass. Actually, it must be capable of ACCELERATING that mass at a rate that keeps you from being run over as you enter the freeway. To get better acceleration, you can increase power output or reduce the mass.
This is a phenomenal contribution. Thank you so much, Basil!
Basil, You said much better what I was going to comment on, the Carnot maximum efficiency of the Otto cycle. There are limits as you indicate and the low hanging fruit for the automakers is of course mass. I would note that advances in material science from composites in the engine so higher temps are possible and composites in almost everything else from body panels to drive train will reduce mass but not necessarily safety. But this would make the average car cost significantly more. A note on hybrids and electrics these vehicles won’t be viable until the problems of energy density (fuel capacity in a given volume) and available energy (for accleration) are solved but the good thing about electrics is they are not subject to the carnot cycle except at the power plant.
As a small note about turbos (and superchargers), because you’re blowing more air in the engine, engines with turbochargers and superchargers, all things being equal, have higher compression ratios and thus are more likely to require high octane gasoline. That’s an additional operating cost for consumers.
Basil,
They’re actually talking about two different transmission possibilities. One is the continuously variable transmission (CVT), the other are dual clutch and other sorts of “semi-automatic” transmissions that use a sort of “drive by wire” as you mention. Both provide better fuel economy than traditional automatics. The latter don’t have to be dual clutch, incidentally– a dual clutch just allows much faster shifting from gear to gear than a single clutch automated manual. (And even faster than the best manual drivers.) A dual clutch system basically has one clutch controlling the odd gears, and one the even. While you’re in a gear, say 2nd, the car recognizes whether you’re accelerating or decelerating, and how fast, and puts the other clutch into 1st, 3rd, or 5th. When you shift gears, it disengages one clutch and engages the other very quickly, shifting gears almost instantaneously.
The dual clutch part of the automated manual transmissions is unnecessary for the efficiency improvement over regular automatics, but provides better shifting performance.
Force equals mass times acceleration.
Newton’s third law is “for a force there is always an equal and opposite reaction”
The force exerted on each car is the same, but since one has less mass, it must have greater acceleration.
Instead of worrying about better automatics, he ought to just mandate manual transmissions. They’re lighter, cheaper, simpler, and more efficient.
Changed. Thanks.
Brooks,
Just a quibble with your quibble. He was perfectly correct in using the term Democrat rather than Democratic. It indicates a majority composed of democrats, rather than a majority determined through a democratic process, which is what ‘democratic majority’ implies. A ‘democratic majority’ could consist of either republicans or democrats, and as such it is unclear.
Using a noun to limit or describe another is perfectly acceptable. If you had a majority of females, you would not say feminine majority, but you would use the noun, female, to limit the term majority.
You’re welcome. And one more edit:
In the next to last paragraph, concerning physics, it should read (more clearly):
“(Basic physics: Car A weighs 2000 pounds, Car B weighs 4000 pounds. In a head on collision at the same speed for each car, the smaller Car A absorbs TWICE the forces that Car B does, and Car A is less able to absorb them. Obama is powerless against Sir Isaac Newton.)”
Oh man. Now I’m having a flashback to ME 327 – Thermodynamics from Texas A&M engineering school.
I agree with you on the materials science. On top of what you said, they’ve been working on this for some time, particularly in view that things get more efficient (if not necessarily less polluting, as the output compounds change) at high temperatures. However, the headway has been slow, and not for lack of trying. These are hard problems, and I don’t think government fiat is really going to make those problems vanish.
Tim, I am a fiscal conservative but I do believe in taxes. The problem with our current system is that we missed the chance for real reform 30 years ago. Fuel should cost today about $10 a gallon. That tax would have trumped CAFE standards by a mile and because it would have been anticipated by the automakers they would have made investments to produce higher mileage cars that were safe as well. It is all about time scales, the time it takes for material science to go from the lab to an industry. Nippon and Kobe steel in Japan produce a variety of titanium steel alloy products for automobiles. This is racing and aerospace tech down to the consumer but a bunch of problems had to be solved first like how do you mold titanium into auto parts and this took at least a decade to solve.
To fund our highway infrastructure we need to index the gas tax to inflation to keep the real price of a gallon of fuel constant. By doing this we will begin to insulate ourselves from oil price volatility as the percentage contribution of crude oil falls in the final pump price. Bio fuels would compete not on the basis of crude price but on the final pump price. A bio fuel could be twice to three times as expensive as crude oil but the government subsidy could come from diverted gas taxes reducing the difference at the pump to zero. As the infant bio-fuel industry matured and became more efficient then the subsidy would be reduced. This is such basic tax policy that all of our competitors use without our competitive advantage in producing bio fuels that it amazes me why we never bit the bullet. Lack of leadership.
Thanks for adding to that. Sorry if I lost too much to oversimplification.
For myself, having driven some CVT-equipped cars, the driving experience with CVTs wasn’t that great. (I drove a Sentra, and a new review of Honda’s newest Insight with CVT was less than complimentary about the drivetrain overall.)
You’re right, though, that both CVT and dual-clutch system improve on the efficiency.
Except that you can’t use MPG when comparing diesel’s CO2 output. You have to use pounds CO2 per mile or something similar. Diesel is more energy dense, and thus has more CO2 per gallon, about 15-20% more. The EPA does this conversion, though.
Diesel engines are still more efficient even when taking this into account, but not by quite as much.
Mdubs,
SUVs are more dangerous than other cars of their weight because of a high center of gravity and other things that contribute to poor handling for their size. It would be nice to also see statistics for large but low cars, like full size sedans and wagons.
Mdubs, I agree that smaller vehicles are better able to avoid collisions, but that says nothing about drivers — especially ones texting or browsing the internet, dealing with children screaming in the back seat, sipping a latte, etc. My point is nothing to do with the rate of collisions, but simply the physics of it. However, with regard to the rate of collisions, I’ll render the opinion that the overall accident rate will stay basically constant, absent any additional driver training and brainwashing (e.g., put the phone down), with a concomitant increase in serious injuries and fatalities resulting from lighter cars.
Thanks for highlighting that.
1. Fixed. Good catch. Thanks.
2. I strongly agree with you. I think consumer choice is probably indirectly captured in the economic/job loss numbers, but I would bet it’s an incomplete measurement. More importantly, I think it should be stressed as an important benefit (and that I should have done so).
I believe there was actually a fair amount of discussion and analysis that went into each of those assumptions. I don’t think that work is contained in the draft rule I attached to the post. So I think that you may be seeing only the tip of the iceberg. At a minimum, I can tell you that I know of many discussions (in which I was not directly involved) about various components of the externality measures.
Thanks for drawing attention to the zero for national security. I had missed that. I, too, find it surprising. NHTSA explains their logic beginning on page 416 of the attachment. I’d be interested to know what you and others think of their logic.
You may be right, but I think a fair analysis of any alternative, such as the one proposed by the President yesterday, should be evaluated assuming no other policy changes, at least as a first-order matter.
It should be fairly easy to pull the number of gallons estimated to be saved for the TC=TB option, and multiply it by Federal fuel taxes, for at least a back-of-the-envelope estimate of revenue loss to the U.S. Government.
Once we know that, then you and others can predict how Congress might react to the revenue losses. I would be less certain that even this Congress would raise fuel taxes.
I think you have hit the nail on the head for what to examine when the Obama Administration proposes their rule. In my experience, the NHTSA staff who run the analyses are nonpartisan professionals who take great professional care and pride in the intellectual integrity of their work. The policy guidance (which some could label as political, although I would not) is most likely to come in the form of different inputs into the modeling process — different assumptions about various externalities that become inputs into NHTSA’s modeling.
Also I would not necessarily attribute all differences in assumptions to differences in the party in control. My limited experience in this area suggests that there is still a lot of serious debate about various externalities, and well-intentioned people can come to different conclusions. I’m not saying policy priorities or policy philosophy or partisanship does not matter here. I am saying that there is plenty of room for legitimate debate about the inputs to the NHTSA model.
NormD, the Diesel cycle itself is more efficient (, as the high compression ratios used in typical diesel engines produce more useful power than that produced by gas (Otto cycle) engines, which are unable to operate at such high compression ratios due to the limits of gasoline and the engine design. Here’s another Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_cycle . (The section on thermal efficiency walks through the math.)
Efficiency is the useful work produced by a given energy input. The Diesel cycle produces more work from the same energy input than the Otto cycle. (And I drive a car that uses a gasoline-powered Otto cycle energy. No moral superiority here.)
NormD,
You are correct about the NOx problem in diesel. Disesl engines, because of its high compression ratio, produces more nitrogen oxides (NOx). To counter that they use various DeNOx systems like SCR, Urea-Dosing etc. For example, Daimler’s DeNOx systems are branded as BlueTec.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_catalytic_reduction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueTec.
One more point. As far as I know the CO/CO2 emission of diesel is less than that of gasoline (please correct me if I am wrong). But again diesel has problems w.r.t. particulate matter (soot) emission. For this, cars need to use particulate filters (traps the soot and burns it at required intervals).
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_particulate_filter
The above NOx problem was one of the big stumbling block for relaunch of diesel in USA especially in California. Modern DeNOx systems apparently solved the problem. Needless to say all these things add to the cost of engine/vehicle.
Thanks, Darren!
And it’s Mr, not Dr. No Ph.D. here.
-kbh
Potheads?
This compression issue has always bothered me. I grew up in the 60s when high-compression gas engines were very common. I rebuilt a few engines where I used after market high compression pistons. I *thought* that high compression caused smog problems because when you combine Nitrogen and Oxygen at high temp and pressure you get NOx. The mandated solution was to outlaw high compression engines. Am I wrong? Why don’t diesels’ have the same problem?
Something is wrong. If I start with a barrel of oil and I can make 55 gallons of diesel or 55 gallons of gasoline and the diesel weighs more than gasoline then how is mass conserved?
The NHTSA seems to say that while there may be national security savings to be found in reduced consumption (although NHTSA also makes it obvious that they don’t believe this!), they claim that more stringent CAFE standards will not reduce imports by a large enough degree to make US military presence in the Middle East unnecessary. I somewhat buy this logic, but basically all commenters disagreed, and previous Department of Energy studies have estimated this between 10 and 30 cents. In addition, further reading of the report cast doubts on the entire document’s validity.
I am very concerned about the carbon impact section. The authors decide to halve a 2005 literature review’s estimate of 14 cents per ton to reflect only the costs to the US. The problem occurs because the NHTSA thought that these were 2005 dollars, when they were really 1995 dollars, so their cost of 7 cents should actually be 20 cents per ton. The AUTHOR corrected them on this, but they do not seem to have incorporated his correction.
Although I might disagree with the NHTSA’s reluctance to assign positive benefits to reductions in oil consumption, to not bother to translate prices to real terms is completely ridiculous. This is very bad, and it is not a judgement call. It is either incompetence or willful negligence. I find it very hard to take the report seriously after reading a bit about its methodology.
Also:
Cents (in my post) should be dollars.
The relevant carbon section begins on page 452.
So if you can control the NOx problem then cannot gasoline engines be run at high compression and get the same efficiency as diesels?
The requirement was written in terms of miles per gallon, largely for metrological reasons, gallons of liquid fuel are more easily measured than CO2 coming out the tailpipe. The specification to meet is miles per gallon, and so proper engineering requires a design to maximize miles per gallon. If the specification were pounds of CO2 per mile, then a different design might be used. Ask and ye shall receive. Ask for more miles per gallon and ye shall receive more miles per gallon.
Diesel fuel does contain 10% more heat energy per gallon, 125000 BTU’s than gasoline at 115000 BTU’s, but that is not the only, or even the main reason, diesel engines give better fuel mileage than gasoline engines. The higher compression ratios possible in diesel engines means more of the heat energy is converted into useful work.