yeah but the fusion reactor is just to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity once, all of which is consumed at the moment of time travel.
If you forwent the gas engine now you'd need electric motors to drive the vehicle and likely a lower output nuclear reactor for low level continuous power output, and some type of reliable, deep cycle batteries.
Not very practical in 1988.

 

it was a joke,

 

I know. So was that.

 

There are aspects of CAFE that I don’t like either, particularly the fact that electrification is given considerably more credit than I think is due. But since CAFE introduction in the mid 1970’s, fleet average fuel economy (not counting the last few years of the high electrification credits) has a bit more than doubled, from about 13mpg to about 27mpg. I wouldn’t call that an epically failed regulation that has achieved literally nothing.

 

I think it is going to depend on how you define "failure". If by "failure" you mean "I was inconvenienced by it", I agree. Regulation isn't going to be 100% good. It's going to be a compromise. I don't like being told I can go 50 on this road because I can definitely do 75 but unfortunately, not everyone can do it safely so....

 

I'm talking about the 90's to today. Pre-fuel injection era just isn't relevant
I don't know about your reccolection from the 90's but I had a 94 grand cherokee that got about 18 mpg real world mileage.
Today my dad has a 24 grand cherokee, it gets about 18 mpg real world mileage.
Cars no different, low to high 20's depending what it was.
Today, low to high 20's depending what it is.
The CAFE reg went from something like 20mpg to 45 mpg during that time period.
It's because it's ridden with loopholes that have NOTHING to do with the cars you actually sell, just what is "offered"

 

absolutely NOT what I mean by failed.
I mean it has not achieved squat to increase fuel economy because of how ridden with loopholes it is.

You can sell ONE electric vehicle per month and 34,000 pick up trucks per month and you get to average 200mpg together with 17 mpg and "meet" the requirement.
All it does is drive up the cost of cars with all the platforms manufacturers have to produce to pull up their average when they don't sell any of them but have to produce them anyway.
I have no issue being inconvenienced with a legit regulation.
IMO there should be WAY, WAY stricter weight limits on SUV's and trucks.
Now with the EV insanity there's some EV SUV's that weight in close to 10,000 pounds.
Absolute insanity that 10,000 pounds of resources going into ONE vehicle can be hailed as an environmentally friendly car, not to mention the death brought upon anyone hit by that car
in a non-EV car that doesn't weight 4+ tons.
Jesus, if one of us were hit head on in our corvette by an EV hummer we'd be liquified.

 

I agree 100%.
That's the issue. All the advancement in ICE tech just went into more power and bigger vehicles and not increased mpg's, which is what the CAFE reg was supposed to do.
It actually did nothing

 

There's a lot of people here that really don't understand what the numbers on an oil bottle mean. If you still think that 0w-40 is thinner than 5w-30 then you are one of those people who don't understand.

 

Well, we aren’t as far apart as I thought from your initial post. If you call 1990 the starting point, I agree that while not zero, recent mpg increases have been small. For example, my wife’s 2023 CT5 with turbo V6 and AFM gets just a couple of mpg better mileage than her similar sized and similar performing 2012 BMW550 with turbo V8. But also yes, most of the factor of two on mileage for CAFE happened between the 1970’s and 90’s. And yes, as I indicated in my earlier post, credits for electric drive are vastly overstated by CAFE. But no regulations are perfect, any more than any people are perfect. Had it not been for CAFE and the parallel emissions regulations (which are also flawed when it comes to electricity and ethanol), computer controlled fuel injection for gains in mileage, power, and emissions would never have happened, and we’d still be driving around in a sea of 10mpg carbureted smog.

 

That is a fair point. So here is the question. Without CAFE anymore, what do you think will happen? As we make a system more efficient, we are going to come to the point where we are getting smaller and smaller gains. First day out, a good manager might get a POS organization to improve by 30%. Next year, he might be able to get maybe 20%. 5 years later, the improvements might be in single digits. At which point, perhaps the goal should be to get as much as you can WITHIN REASON and not expect leaps and bounds like you had.

 

Nothing, same thing that happened over the last 30 years. They just won't have to make entire platforms of compliance cars to get their average down when nobody
buys those cars and the loss just gets rolled into the cars people buy.

it prevented nothing. To suggest otherwise would be suggesting that if not for that failed regulation cars would what? Weight 7,000 pounds on average rather than 5,000?
Or have 500+ hp engines in every car?
no way. Cars today (the ones that sell) are designed exactly how people want them. People wanted bigger, they got bigger.
They wanted better engine performance than in the 90's they got it.
They don't actually care about mileage if it means sacrificing performance and size so manufactureres didn't give them that other than in compliance cars that nobody buys.

true, because this discussion is literally about the regulation designed to drive the OUTCOME, which is mileage by definition of the regulation.
it can't be more straight forward.

The regulation does not require some measure of "efficiency" based on how much mass you can move with "x" amount of fuel, it requires ONE singular thing
MPG minimum for the fleet of available cars for sale.
I'm not making some abstract point about efficiency, nobody denies ICE tech has come leaps and bounds in 30 years. The point is that this regulation has achieved
less than nothing with regard to actual real world mpg for the actual US fleet, which is NOT an even distribution of the cars available, it's the cars actually on the road.

 

I'm not missing your point, I get it, I just don't agree.
They continued to advance engines because people wanted better performing engines with more power, better idles, longer maintenance intervals, more reliable, etc.
All of that would directly translate into mpg if that's what people cared about.
(look at the C7 vs the C4. Are you telling me the CAFE reg is why the base C7 has WAY more power than the C4 ZR1 and they would not have improved the engine design if not for CAFE?)
No, the design incentive was there regardless.
All those incentives were still there.
Obviously that tech COULD have gone into more mileage (which was the goal of the reg), but because the reg was so failed in design (or by design)
it only went into heavier, bigger cars with more power AND the advent of compliance cars.
All the compliance cars that we know nobody buys is kind of proof that the cars people actually buy were going in a certain direction, CAFE or not, and thanks to CAFE
we simply got a half dozen BS compliance cars from every manufacturer that get the average up for the reg while the cars people actually buy are designed exactly how people want them.

I'm saying that CAFE drove compliance cars, which drives up the price of cars people buy, and otherwise does nothing. If not for CAFE we'd just have lower cost cars that are essentially the same.
That's my opinion and I get there's tons of viewpoints.

It's just every major popular truck and SUV: Tahoe, Blazer, Explorer, Yukon, Wrangler, Cherokee, F150, Sierra, Ram, etc.
The models from the mid 90's got virtually identical mileage as the models from the mid 2020's

 

interesting.
ok

then please inform us why every single popular truck, suv and car get virtually identical mileage today as they did 30 years ago
if it in fact is NOT compliance cars that nobody buys being used to comply with the failed regulation?

 

I guess you don't believe in innovation from competition in any way? Like why would apple make a better battery in a laptop if there's no regulation on battery life?
Because Dell did, that's why.

You are almost suggesting that we still don't have the C4 engine in our cars thanks to politicians coming up with CAFE.

I believe competition drives it.
If mustang kept working hard in a mystical world with no CAFE and built a better engine corvette will need to keep working on theirs or they'd look like shlubs with a crap engine while Ford's kicks butt.
If the Explorer 2005 model had an engine with 50% more power than the 95 version while keeping the same mileage they'd kick the butt of
the Blazer if they didn't do crap with their engine.
Pickup trucks are no different.

And if you are correct why so many compliance cars from EVERY manufacturer that nobody buys? Why would they do that?
They do it because they have to comply with a failed regulation.
That's what we got, compliance cars. No chance they would not have kept working to improve engines in a competetive environment if not for CAFE.

anyway, we're obviously not going to agree so it makes no difference at this point.
IMO CAFE is epically failed

 

So your argument is that the manufacturer makes a bunch of cars that are compliance cars to get the CAFE numbers to work. Fair enough. This is the part I want to know. You say nobody buys them, right? So what happened to them? Pushed off a cliff?

 

I have a 2017 F250 Lariat with SRW. I get 13 on the nose with a cap on the bed. I'm not a fan of real world mpg. Would higher elevation affect mpg? Temperatures? Winter or summer blend gas? Driving style? IMO, I don't see how to control those variables to make any measurements work.

 

I can tell you believe you are truly an expert and are definitely not arrogant at all.

gotcha, so competition doesn't drive innovation in cars, just literally everything else. Makes sense as long as you don't think about it.
Huge barriers to entry so no need to worry about competition in a country where there's
literally 100's upon 100's of foreign cars available plus of course a hundred domestic models as well, but doesn't matter what competitors offer because who would
look at more than one vehicle when shopping for a car.
Still making sense as long as you don't think about it.
I heard actually that corvette was going to use the C4 engine through 2025 and then they remembered about the CAFE regulation and had to make a way better engine for the C5, same issue with the C6, then again the C7.
Thank you CAFE.

Is there a gov't regulation that forces competition for car interiors then? There must be right? Like endless bells and whistles and infotainment systems, touch screens, carplay, heated seats, cooled seats,
dual climate, rear climate vents, USB ports, etc?
Hell, why do they put power seats in cars if a regulation doesn't require it? Or heated seats?
Why would you add weight, cost and complication to manufacture just to add a heated/ventilated seat into a car?
Why have power windows? Roll up is lighter, cheaper and easier.

Maybe because BMW put them in and then other manufacturers had to do it too or they'd look like they had worse cars?
Or let me guess, something other than improvement driven by competition?
I'm just messing with you, I know it's not competition, it's the CLOCIS regulation, casually calls CLOCKS Reg.
Corporate Level of Cool Interior Stuff regulation spear headed by Elizabeth Warren in the 90's to ensure that everyone has fair and equitable access to cool interior stuff.
I mean hell, I'm thankful, if not for our gov't increasing access to cool interior stuff I might not have vented seats in my Z07 and it wouldn't have fuel injection either.

 

I'm not a car salesman I would guess that I can easily UPSELL Customer Joe on a higher trim level than a lower pollution package. I go in wanting to buy a C7 base and the salesman tries to sell me a 3LT package and he might get me to bite or maybe settle for a 2LT. OTOH, if he tries to sell me a low pollution package, how far do you think it will go?

FFS, can we discuss this without bringing politics into it?

 

Was the infotainment system economically feasible at that point? Were there more pressing needs? Not sure. Maybe that could have kept it on the back burner?

If it were free, they'd take it. Soon as they have to pay, it probably won't work. If it didn't work that way, Wal*Mart wouldn't be selling cheaply commissioned Chinese stuff. Like I asked, how would it happen if the customer had to pay for an emissions package that would cut down emissions vs say a better stereo system or heated seats, etc.? Which one do you think will get bought? Even if you told them it would save them money in the long run, most customers would be too stupid to pay more up front today.

Government regulation prevents us from killing each other, to some extent, for example. Yes, it's rather inconvenient when it goes against what you want to do. If you are saying "It has to be perfect before it is good.", I guess.