Ideally, if you are going to write a regulation aimed at achieving a goal, it should… 3
Ideally, if you are going to write a regulation aimed at achieving a goal, it should be written so that it's technology neutral and for the most part the US Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules are just that. The bottom line aim of CAFE is to reduce the amount of energy used for road transportation in the United States.
Back in 2007 when the current requirements were passed by congress, many outside observers felt that requiring automakers to hit a fleet average of 35 mpg or more by 2020 would require large numbers of plug-in electric vehicles. While there will undoubtedly be a certain percentage of new vehicles running on electrons by the end of the decade, many in the auto industry started looking at the latest available engine technologies and came to the realization that they could actually achieve the required improvements without a big, heavy battery pack at a much lower cost and without sacrificing the flexibility of liquid fuels.
The problem lies in the fact that as fuel efficiency increases, the percentage of savings from each incremental improvement drops as I explained in this article I wrote several years ago.
http://green.autoblog.com/2009/07/23/greenlings-where-are-the-most-important-mpg-increases-at-the-u/
If you can achieve a real world 50+ mpg in a midsize car at a price of $25-30,000 it becomes much harder to justify the cost and limitations of a battery electric vehicle. The combination of downsized engines with advanced combustion technology and hybridization will probably be the volume play by the end of the decade.
#fuelefficiency #cafe #electricvehicles
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How tough CAFE delays EV acceptance
As you may have noticed, the industry's enthusiasm for electric vehicles has dimmed considerably in the past year. You could cite several reasons: election-year attacks on the Obama administration…
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