Newsweek article"So gas just hit another miserable milestone. Unleaded regular is averaging a record $3.30 a gallon and seems likely to blast past $4 by Memorial Day. Wouldn't it be great if you could drive a car that gets 50 miles per gallon? Well, you can. Just hop on a plane and fly to Europe, where all new cars average 43mpg, or Japan, where the average hits 50mpg. Here in the United States, we're stuck at 25mpg...
all auto companies are focusing on jacking up fuel economy, especially
since Congress just mandated that all new autos sold by 2020 must average 35mpg. The new mileage mantra also is motivated by the fact that car sales are weak, partially because of panic at the pump. But putting out a 50mpg car any time soon is daunting even to the maker of America's mileage champ, the 48mpg Toyota Prius...Consider the exercise Ford just went through. It ran a computer simulation on what would happen to the mileage of a Ford Focus small car if you built it entirely out of lightweight aluminum. Losing the steel allowed the Focus to drop 1,000 pounds—30 percent of its body weight. That enabled Ford to outfit it with a tiny one-liter engine, half the size of its old engine, but far more fuel efficient because of new technology. Best of all, the small motor goes just as fast as the big one because the car is so much lighter. The result: fuel economy on this fabulous Focus went from 35mpg to 50mpg. What's stopping Ford from moving this car from pixels to pavement? The cost of an all-aluminum car could top $50,000...
Back in the 1980s, the Honda CRX-HF and the Geo Metro each got more than 50mpg, but they didn't have airbags or steel beams in their doors to protect occupants in a crash. " (Newsweek)
So this article is trying to convince me, that the reason that the BIG 3 don't have a fuel efficient car yet is the consumers fault? Because consumers want size, power, & comfort the Big 3 cant increase fuel efficiency by 3% every year. What the hell, we employ engineers that can make Nuclear Subs, Satellites, Go to space, Land on the moon, Fight the moon monsters, unmanned flying drones that can take high speed photographs and drop missiles, but asking car companies to increase their fuel economy by 30% in 15 years is asking to much? Why run the test with the focus if the metal cost $50,000, there were no other materials available for the engineers to use in conducting this test. The only reason the companies aren't in a rush to increase efficiency is they still have to sell all these 2008 and 2009 models sitting on some dock. For the article to acknowledge that within the last three decades two car companies had a car with 50mpg, that were deemed unsafe due to removed features. Shouldn't 30 years be enough to make an unsafe car that gets 50 mpg a safe car with 50mpg? That's just lazy on behalf of the automakers, and the govt is encouraging it with these auto bailouts, if they let these companies fail. There cars would be liquidated so people who need vehicles could get them cheap and make room in the market place for fuel efficient car companies so people would buy them. And not this volt shit, Electricity is expensive.
