Comment by snakeyjake
7 months ago
>Increase fuel economy -> Introduce fuel economy standards -> Economic cars practically phased out in favour of guzzling "trucks" that are exempt from fuel economy standards -> Worse fuel economy.
tl;dr: This is a myth.
There is no incentive to the consumer to purchase a vehicle with worse fuel economy.
There USED to be an incentive, 30-40 years ago.
It is not 1985 anymore.
The gas guzzler tax covers a range of fuel economies from 12.5 to 22.5 mpg.
It is practically impossible to design a car that gets less than 22.5 mpg.
The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170, with an 6.2 L 8 cylinder engine making ONE THOUSAND AND TWENTY FIVE horsepower is officially rated for 13 mpg but that's bullshit, it's Dodge juicing the numbers just so buyers can say "I paid fifty-four hundred bucks gas guzzler tax BAYBEE" and in real-world usage the Demon 170 is getting 25 mpg. Other examples of cars that cannot achieve 22.5 mpg are the BMW M2/M3/M4/M8, the Cadillac CT5, high-performance sports sedans for which the gas guzzler tax is a <5% price increase. ($5400 is 5% of the Demon 170 price, but 2-3% of what dealers are actually charging for it.)
The three most popular vehicles by sales volume in the United States are: 1. The Ford F-150, 2. The Chevy Silverado, and 3. The Dodge Ram 1500.
The most popular engine configuration for these vehicles is the ~3L V6. Not a V8. A V6.
Less than 1/4th of all pickup trucks are sold equipped with a V8.
According to fueleconomy.gov every single Ford, Chevrolet, and Ram full-size pickup with a V6 would pay no gas guzzler tax.
Most V8s would be close, perhaps an ECU flash away, to paying no gas guzzler tax. The only pickups that would qualify for a gas guzzler tax are the high-performance models-- single-digit percentages of the overall sales volume and at those prices the gas guzzler tax would not even factor into a buyer's decision.
People buy trucks, SUVs, and compact SUVs because they want them and can afford them.
Not because auto manufacturers phased out cars due to fuel economy standards. Not because consumers were "tricked" or "coerced". And certainly not because "the gubmint" messed things up.
They buy them because they WANT them.
The Toyota RAV4 is the 4th most popular car in the US. The Corolla is the 13th most popular. They are built on the same platform and dimensionally, the Corolla is actually very slightly larger except for height. They both come with the same general ballpark choices in engines. The gas guzzler tax only applies to the Corolla, but that doesn't matter because they both would be exempt. People don't freely choose the RAV4 over the Corolla because of fuel economy they buy it because the Corolla has 13 cubic feet of cargo capacity and the RAV4 has 70 cubic feet.
And before anyone says that the gas guzzler tax made passenger cars more expensive, passenger cars can be purchased for the same price adjusted for inflation they could be 50 years ago, but people don't want a Mitsubishi Mirage, which is the same price as a vintage VW Beetle (perennial cheapest new car from the 1960s) and better in every quantifiable metric, they want an SUV.
What may be true is that there is a national policy to keep fuel prices as low as possible, for a myriad of reasons, with one side effect of that policy being that it has enabled people to buy larger less fuel-efficient cars.
I do not believe it is auto manufacturers who are pushing for this policy. I believe it is the freight and logistic market. The auto market is valued at $4 billion, the freight and logistics market is $1,300 billion. GM and Ford are insignificant specks compared to the diesel and gasoline consumers of the freight and logistics firms (who have several powerful lobbies).
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/08/v8-market-share-ju...
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f6197.pdf (gas guzzler worksheet)
Per https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/61b7e040e90e0... the average UK car MPG is ~50mpg, so even allowing for the difference in US and UK gallons a 22.5mpg vehicle is colloquially a "gas guzzler" by our standards.
> What may be true is that there is a national policy to keep fuel prices as low as possible, for a myriad of reasons, with one side effect of that policy being that it has enabled people to buy larger less fuel-efficient cars.
Yes. Americans have always had cheap fuel and it's shaped the entire society around it.
In Britain, a Standard Imperial Gallon is 120% the size of a Standard US Gallon.
So while the fuel economy is higher in the UK, it isn't as high as it first appears.
People love to blame government regulations for consumer preferences that go against their own.
Consumers want larger vehicles, and manufactures bend the rules to allow for such vehicles to be more easily build. Manufactures write the laws, after all. CAFE allows for SUVs and other "light trucks" to get worse fuel economy than a car. Since fuel economy allowances are based on vehicle footprint, and its easier to make a car larger than it is to improve fuel economy.
But ... Why do they want to? I'm genuinely curious. Did this desire for larger vehicles exist latent in the human psyche? Is it an emergent property of a race to the bottom as everyone tries to have the safest car? Or to secure prestige via a positional good, leaving everyone worse off? Do you think marketing choices played a role in shaping our collective desires?
On big American roads it's easy to own big cars. Given that people have to drive a lot because it's so spread out, it's very convenient to be able to put lots of stuff and/or people in a vehicle. I theorise that your car is like another room in your house.
I know my wife likes storing things in the boot of our car and I'm not even American. It means they're always conveniently there - chairs for sitting in the park, shopping bags, groceries that she's going to take to a party or bought for someone else, kids sports equipment.
Humans have an instinct to seek status, like many (most?) other animals.
I agree that fuel cost and tax are not the reason trucks are so popular in the US. The main incentive for US manufacturers to have a large demand for light trucks because of the chicken tax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
That does not make any sense to me. Vehicles can and are manufactured in the US.
Bigger vehicles are popular in the US because people want to be in a bigger vehicle and sit higher up than others, AND can afford to do so (ignoring their long term finances). I.e. the politically popular policy of low gas prices.
That's the long and short of it. Buyers rewarded the sellers that sold big and tall vehicles, so obviously sellers are going to sell big and tall vehicles.
There was no situation where buying a big and tall vehicle was cheaper than a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle, so conclusively, people chose to spend more to get what they wanted. Of course, once someone else gets a bigger vehicle, then you are less safe, unless you get a bigger vehicle, and so on and so forth.
> There is no incentive to the consumer to purchase a vehicle with worse fuel economy.
Not true: Section 179 [0]. Luxury auto manufacturers are well-aware of this [1] and advertise it as a benefit. YouTube et al. are also littered with videos of people discussing how they're saving $X on some luxury vehicle.
> Not because consumers were "tricked" or "coerced". ... They buy them because they WANT them.
To be fair, they only want them because they've been made into extremely comfortable daily drivers. Anyone who's driven a truck from the 90s or earlier can attest that they were not designed with comfort in mind. They were utilitarian, with minimal passenger seating even with Crew Cab configurations. At some point – and I have no idea if this was driven by demand or not – trucks became, well, nice. I had a 2010 Honda Ridgeline until a few weeks ago, which is among the un-truck-iest of trucks, since it's unibody. That also means it's extremely comfortable, seats 5 with ease, and can still do what most people need a truck to do: carry bulky items home from Lowe's / Home Depot. Even in the 2010 model, it had niceties like heated seats. I just replaced it last week with a 2025 Ridgeline, and the new one is astonishingly nicer. Heated and ventilated seats, seat position memory, Android Auto / Apple CarPlay, adaptive cruise control, etc.
That's also not to say that modern trucks haven't progressed in their utility. A Ford F-350 from my youth could pull 20,000 lbs. on a gooseneck in the right configuration. The 2025 model can pull 40,000 lbs., and will do it in quiet luxury, getting better fuel economy.
[0]: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p946#idm140048254261728
[1]: https://www.landroveroflivermore.com/section-179.htm