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In sum, it was the greenest Detroit show on record. So why was I so depressed? Because all the alt-fuel, green-car progress is being made at the margins, while the vast bulk of the U.S. market — represented in the acres of floor-groaning vehicles in Cobo Hall — motors on as if there were no crisis.
Consider the trends: U.S. fleet average fuel economy has been stuck at around 20 mpg for several years, as technical improvements in fuel efficiency are offset by steady increases in vehicle size and horsepower. Cars are, on average, about 800 pounds heavier than they were two decades ago. Virtually every car on the market gets bigger over time. That goes double for trucks. The revised, dimension-based corporate average fuel economy calculations for light trucks, going into effect in 2011, will actually create incentives for manufacturers to build bigger trucks that will jump into bigger size brackets, with lower CAFE expectations. To stand beside Toyota's new Tundra CrewMax half-ton pickup and consider a rule-skirting, super-sized version, à la Ford's Super Duty, is to wilt in fear and frustration. It is true that sales of trucks and full-size SUVs were way down in 2006, but that development didn't translate to significant improvements in fuel consumption, which remains at near historic levels.
Hybrids? Even with considerable tax incentives available for the purchase of the vehicles, and allowing that not all hybrids are hair-shirt, high-mileage runabouts (the Lexus GS450h, for instance), hybrids tallied about 250,000 vehicles sales last year, in a 16-million-unit market. Not nothing, but hardly enough to make a dent in our 783-million-gallon-per-day gasoline habit. What efficiency technologies there have been — things like direct-injection, continuously variable transmissions and optimized aerodynamics — have been outpaced by the escalating horsepower wars. Sedans and coupes with 400- and 500-hp engines are commonplace. The new Dodge Viper unveiled at the show sets an American production-car record of 600 hp. Can the Chevrolet Corvette leave that number unchallenged?
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As the Detroit show glamorously illustrates, deep dysfunction and disconnects remain on the matter of fuel efficiency and consumption. Manufacturers are joyfully exploiting a loophole in CAFE regulations that gives them extra credit for building flex-fuel vehicles, even though the fuel itself — E85 — is all but unavailable. At the same time carmakers crow about their new environmental consciousness, their D.C. lobbyists and lawyers are battling with states over the power to regulate greenhouse gases. I'd be more willing to celebrate all the achievements of the auto industry if these achievements would, at last, move the needle in the right direction.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/highway1/la-hy-neil17jan17,1,645281.story?coll=la-news-highway_1