Obama’s Fuel Economy Standards Worse Than Bush’s: WTF?

(Editors note: edited for abusive language)

I like how the article never cites why the changes were made. Fuel Economy != Emission Output

I’m 99% sure the author has no clue how combustion engines work and how fuel economy and emissions work. Fuel economy and emissions go hand in hand, but they can be trade offs of one another.
Re-designing engines to create less emissions would require current technologies like direct injection or forced induction. That adds to the cost of the design process and manufacturing. But high fuel economy and low emission engines has been around for YEARS in Europe and Japan AND US car companies own large stakes in most of them!! ie: Ford -> Mazda, Volvo
They also share engine designs which they could have easily and cheaply brought to the US. Mazda 3 = ford engine

Direct Injection is great for fuel economy gains and can greatly reduce emissions since the ECU of the car already knows the predetermined amount of fuel and air coming in. N/A vehicles guess how much air is coming in and throws in fuel and thus have a high tendency to run rich which lowers fuel economy and increases bad emissions. OBD2 specs measure the emissions at the 2 or 4 O2 sensors in the exhaust, so it has to continuously adjust the Air Fuel Ratio (AFR), but still often runs rich.

Forced induction is great for smaller engines to give them more power and same or slightly better fuel ecomony and reduced emissions. With lowered red lines the ECU can be programmed to run the AFR lean and save gas without the fear of detonation.

It is cheaper and easier to create cars the create less pollution than fuel economy with current engine technologies. That should be the real trade off.

The part about all of this is that all American car manufactures own some stake in the European and Asian car companies which for YEARS have been putting out low emission and high fuel economy engines never put them in their US models.

The lowing of the standard is more practical for fuel economy since it will open the doors for better emission standards due to the inherent LOWERED cost of doing it.

I’m not going to defend Obama on this one, but that article and the author lack and real information or logic. There is no justification that the author can come up with over the lowered standards. Keep spreading the ignorance and fuel the bus.

Crap, almost forgot Obama is dumping millions into electric car technologies which don’t produce emissions, looks like you forgot that all together… Even hybrids are getting a bump from him too. Must of accidentally forgot that in the article.

For those of you who are bashing Obama for this this, get your information straight before you put your hands on the keyboard.

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Derek,

I can see that you cannot admit to your ignorance of engine design. I do not expect one to fully understand it. But if you are going to “bash any sacred cow” you need to take a hard look in the mirror and realize that you have the power to layout the information to your readers. This is how journalism should be. Unfortunately, (not aimed at you) it is not always so. Research to educate yourself and then your readers.

It is convenient to toss around the notion that the “relaxed” fuel economy standards is an outrage. I agree it is. BUT there has to be a reason for it. State and Federal legislators have been trying for years to improve fuel economy and emission standards. California is a prime example. Their strict policies on emissions has cause US automakers to button down and design engines to meet this standard. Why? Who in their right mind would not want to sell a vehicle to a single state just because of a new regulation. Designing these engines takes years and plenty of testing. Sure a few ECU tweaks here and there and more expensive catalytic converters can help, but it still comes down to R&D of better engines.

The topic you chose was a good one and that is the reason I found your site from digg.com. I wanted to see if there was a reason behind the relaxed standards. I found nothing more that a blind rant.

Sure a stricter policy on fuel economy would be nice, but getting down the technical nitty gritty of HOW it is done is a lot more complicated. The hard reduction in emissions is actually a better solution and not only that, it is faster and cheaper to develop. The positive by product of that is IMPROVED fuel economy. It may not be as good as one wanted but the end product is better. Better MPG, but dismal emissions? That trade off will never fly. It might even meet certain state standards like Virginia (where I’m from, unfortunately) or California.

If US automakers want to stay in the game, yes, they will will have to work with the new standards and that will prove to US consumers that they are serious about business and what the people need, not want. By engineering better emission engines, they can improve fuel economy and that will win back the consumers.

Here is a case study on fuel economy vs emissions for a better understanding.
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/HV/433.pdf

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Nice ranting!
It takes all types to drum up support for this change. Like Paul, I was drawn to this site with an interest to discover the Administration’s approach. Ranting isn’t my thing so – I came, and found nothing.
IMHO – President Obama just challenged the Industry far beyond this website realizes. The subject is WAY too complicated for it to hold a typical consumers interest.
The orchestration required to pull this off is huge.
Please continue to push and rant – green transportation needs the support. As for me – I’ll look elsewhere for constructive criticism and new ideas. (like public transportation vouchers for gas guzzler trade-ins).

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