Saw a sticker on the back of a pickup truck this morning: "Freedom isn't free." Meanwhile, on the radio, some so-called auto analyst from a company I'd never heard of was breathlessly proclaiming the new national fuel economy standard would add $7000 to the cost of an SUV. Freedom isn't free. Developing and implementing the technologies needed to ensure our cars and trucks burn less fuel isn't free, either. Why should anyone think it would be?
We'll look at the detail more closely over the next few days, but in broad principal, the new national fuel economy standard is pure common sense. For the first time, we have a clearly defined, national regulation for fuel economy and CO2 emissions. No longer will the EPA and the Department of Transportation be fighting over whose jurisdiction has primacy over CO2 emissions. States like California will no longer be able to threaten enacting a unique set of CO2 emissions standards that would become a defacto fuel economy standard.
The auto industry -- and it's not just what remains of the Detroit Three, but every other automaker selling products in the U.S. market -- now knows what is expected of it until 2016, and, most importantly, knows the rules will apply to every state in the union. The nightmare scenario of a handful of states demanding unique specification vehicles to meet unique emissions laws has been avoided.
But let's not sugarcoat it: This national fuel economy standard will cost us money. It will demand new, more complex, more efficient powertrains -- direct injection turbocharged gas engines, diesels, hybrids, electric vehicles -- and increased use of more costly lightweight materials. It will change the types of vehicles we buy.
Is that a bad thing? Only if you believe that we human beings are a dull, uninventive lot with the imagination of a goldfish. I remember the moaning and handwringing when emissions controls were first introduced in the 1970s. Many naysayers predicted it would be the end of the big horsepower performance car. Who would have thought that 30 years' later the Chevy small block would be punching out 500-600 hp while emitting only a tiny fraction of the hydrocarbons of its ancestors?
The enthusiasts' car is not going away. Fun cars are not going away. V-8s will survive, but they will become niche powertrains for high performance vehicles, not something you put in the family Ford. Efficiency will become the new horsepower. The best and the brightest brains in automaker engineering shops around the globe are already flat out figuring out ways of doing more with less. GM is already getting a reliable 300 hp out of turbocharged Ecotec fours; BMW is working on a new generation of turbo four and six cylinder M-car engines; the new McLaren P11 supercar will be almost as fast as a Ferrari Enzo with an engine two-thirds the size.
Given mainstream America's hostility to a gas tax (as we saw last year, the only proven way to ensure consumers demand fuel efficient vehicles is to make gas expensive) a national fuel economy standard is probably the next best means of reducing the huge amount of gasoline this country consumes every day in its cars and trucks. The benefit is not just lower CO2 emissions, but reduced dependence on oil owned by foreigners who may or may not remain friendly to the United States over the coming decades.
Like the sticker says: Freedom isn't free.