The New EPA Mileage Standard and You

The CAFÉ standard is the Corporate Average Fuel Economy for all passenger cars built by any manufacturer. It is a critical number to the design and marketing of vehicles we will be driving over the next couple of decades.

In 2016 the CAFÉ standard goes from the current 27 miles per gallon to 34.1, which is a very significant increase of 25%. Then in 2025 it rises to an incredible 54.4 miles per gallon. There is not a car on the road today with a gasoline or diesel engine that will achieve that standard. To the best of my knowledge there is no current technology other than plug in electric cars that will reach over 50 mpg. The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf may be fine for the urban driver, but will hardly do for suburbanites.

Over the next few years we will see existing technology refined and improved to increase efficiency while vehicles become smaller, lighter and more aerodynamic. The standard engine in most cases will be a small, fuel sipping 4 cylinder. Optional V6 or V8 power plants will probably be discouraged with a high markup on price.
Overall the outlook for achieving the 34 mpg standard is pretty good with ingenuity on the car makers' part and acceptance of smaller cars by the consumer. Auto companies, the government and environmental factions will use advertising and social pressure to encourage us to accept this new reality in the car world.

Then we will face the 54.4 mpg mark. Everything we know about powering a car will change as engineers strive to push the limit of economy. Unless a completely new method of fueling our cars comes out of all the research going on the car as we know it will be a thing of the past.
Using more hybrid power, more plug in technology and more alternative fuels like E85 will only carry us so far. Remember this is a corporate average. For every vehicle they make that gets a poor 30, 35 or even 40 mpg (under the new standard) there will have to be an equal number of cars that get 60, 70 or more mpg.

Cars can only get so light and maintain any margin of safety. New alloys, carbon fiber and plastics will help, but after that we will have to start losing items we may not want to give up. Every accessory adds weight to the car, and many are direct power drains. Air conditioning units can become more fuel efficient by converting to electric compressors, but even those will require the engine to produce the electricity to operate them and add weight to the car. Plush seats, entertainments systems, extra sound deadening, carpet, power accessories and convertible tops all add weight and all may become much more expensive to discourage buyers or unavailable.
At the same time manufacturers are stripping weight and power from our cars they will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research and develop new power systems and fuels. They will have little choice but to pass that cost on to motorists as increased pricing, making cars more expensive.

Unless we are willing to drive cars about the size of a golf cart, with about as much acceleration and limited top end spend of maybe 40mph new methods of motivation are needed. Exotic fuels, solar and hydrogen cell power are but a few of the commonly known experimental sources of power in development today.

From a repair shop owners point of view it is going to be a real challenge. We will have to keep up with this rapidly changing technology. A lot of it will be a spot gap, temporary, innovation used only for a year or two as more advanced systems are perfected. The requirement for the high mileage standard phases in with 5% increases each year until 2025. This means the car makers cannot wait to come up with the final answer to the mileage problem, but have to reach intermittent goals each year on the way to it. Promising technology that may need a few more years to reach a useable level will have to be developed parallel to an answer for this year's goal. As a result shop owners and technicians will have to train and tool for the new technology only to retrain and retool a year later. The incremental design improvements of the past decade or two will become leaps of modern science.

Will our auto industry, makers and repair service, be able to master the mandate? I think so. We are smart and innovative people who love a good challenge. The real question is how you will handle the changes coming in the next decade.

While the increase in mileage for pickup trucks and SUV's is not as drastic as it is for cars it will still rise to double what it is now. The pickup as we know it will disappear and the large 9 passenger SUV will be obsolete unless a completely new economical source of power is found. If you have a Suburban, Expedition, full size pickup or even a large sedan and you want to still have one 10 years from now you should plan to maintain what you have because you probably will not be able to buy a new one.

Common sense maintenance should be a long term plan with the goal of keeping a vehicle as trouble free as possible. Many of our clients have well in excess of a quarter of a million miles on their car or pickups and some are approaching the half million mark.

New Pictures On The Walls

If you visit the shop take a look around the waiting area and you will see some of Janice's pictures hanging on the walls. These were taken during a 2009 trip to South Africa.

There are some really great shots (yes I am biased) of Lions, a Leopard, a Cheetah, a baby Elephant and it's Mom, and a couple of really nice birds.

The amazing thing to me is not the clear quality of the pictures, but that she actually took them, live and in person. She was sitting in an open jeep when the lions walked past her, chased reports of leopard sightings for 3 days and sat patiently clicking away as the herd of 20 plus elephants crossed her path. The cheetah walked into view, jumped up on the log, struck a pose looking directly into the camera and then wandered off. The Lions were looking for lunch!

Janice is going to put up the bear pictures from Alaska next, so stay tuned.