SOURCE: Motor Authority
motor authority

Quote:
CAFE regulations expected to cripple niche carmakers
Posted on Tuesday 29 April 2008

As the fallout from last week’s CAFE announcement continues, worrying details about the new standards and how they appear harsher for some carmakers than others are starting to appear. The 2015 interim target of 31.6MPG fleet average for new cars and trucks is based on a complicated formula that takes into account all manner of inputs including a calculation of a vehicle’s footprint – the area bounded by the wheels – and power levels.

It’s been revealed that under the new rules the relative increase is highest for the smallest vehicles. Each automaker is assigned its own separate fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks, based on the number of vehicles of each footprint size that it sells, reports AutoWeek.

It means a carmaker like Porsche, which builds a range of small yet powerful cars, would have to average 41.3mpg in 2015. Toyota, on the other hand, which has a mix of low powered sedans and SUV models, would need to average about 7mpg less.

It’s not just Porsche that will suffer. Low volume players, with less diverse product offerings, like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW as well as Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki, will face tougher standards under the proposal.

It had good intentions, but all its going to do is make us lose our choice of automobiles on the market.

This is the wrong way to do something like this.

they should allow a company to have one car that doesn't fall under that standard... like chevy corvette, dodge viper, ford i dont even know...

That's why it's an average. Only thing is you have to make way more high mileage vehicles then ones that get poor mileage.

Yeah, but some companies (Ferrari, Porsche, Lambo) only sell performance vehicles. Isn't that what the gas guzzler tax is for? It goes about what its doing in a wrong way.

No that's completely different. Before small manufacturers that sold a limited number of cars something like under 2k a year were exempt from CAFE now it's based on vehicle footprint. Not complying is a big fine. Ferrari, Lambo etc might decide to pay the fines and pass the extra cost onto the customers. Why not they already pay close to half a mil per car anyways. Porche on the other hand... VW should be able to do it if they change a majority of their lineup to diesel and are able to get em past emissions. Their diesels already do pretty good.

People are gonna hate buying diesels with the price of diesel going up so much.

diesel is so bad and only going to get worse....they need to make good looking electric/turbo gas cars.....i hurd rumors awile ago about a better looking turbo preus but i dont know what happened....that and an electric motor mounted on each wheel hub of a mini cooper each pruducing 120 hp giveing a car with no added weight of an engine or tranny 480HP is amazing i would buy one even though the ones projected to come out were only going to be 2 engines....all and all still 240HP on a mini cooper prob weighing no more then 1500lbs would be amazing

sorry it was in my car and driver a wile ago

Electric cars are a big money pit. The batteries need replacing around 50k miles and cost around $2k. Toyota picks up the tab once, after that... Sounds like fun when people start buying them second hand.