The esteemed William Teach has a story up today about automobiles:
“Historic” Obama CAFE Standards To Raise Auto Costs
By William Teach August 29, 2012 – 2:50 pm
I remember seeing a Tweet from Obama yesterday about them passing “historic” new auto MPG standards, because obviously no one else has ever passed them. Hell, if Obama bakes cookies, it’s probably historic. But, as for real historic
(Washington Post) The Obama administration announced strict new vehicle fuel-efficiency standards Tuesday, requiring that the U.S. auto fleet average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, an uncontroversial move that, unlike other administration energy policies, was endorsed by industry and environmentalists alike.
The new rules, announced by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa P. Jackson, expand on existing standards requiring American-made cars and light trucks to average 34.5 mpg by 2016. They will significantly cut U.S. oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by the time they are fully implemented, according to the EPA.
“Customers want higher fuel efficiency in their cars and trucks, and GM is going to give it to them,” said Greg Martin, General Motors’ executive director for communications. “We expect the rules to be tough, but we have a strong history of innovation, and we’ll do our best to meet them.”
Yeah, that type of “innovation” has led to vehicles that are much lighter, meaning that they are more deaths from auto accidents. If customers really wanted higher fuel efficiency GM and others would do this, not have the government force them to do it.
Auto dealers warned Tuesday that making the technical changes required to achieve greater efficiency would increase the average price of a vehicle by $3,000 by the time the rules are fully implemented.
“This increase shuts almost 7 million people out of the new-car market entirely and prevents many millions more from being able to afford new vehicles that meet their needs,” Bill Underriner, who chairs the National Automobile Dealers Association, said in a statement.
Well, do we really want so many cars on the road? That’s bad for globull warming, and, hey, look
In addition to increasing fuel efficiency, the rules also establish an emissions standard of 144 grams of carbon dioxide per mile for passenger cars and 203 grams of CO2 per mile for trucks.
So, more globull warming rules by executive fiat. Must be nice to be the king and drive around in a vehicle that pays absolutely zero attention to the rules passed for Everyone Else.
Unfortunately, Mr Teach slipped up; he should have made the connection to a story he had the previous day:
Bummer: GM Suspends Chevy Volt Production Again
By William Teach August 28, 2012 – 2:01 pm
Sales of Volts have certainly been a little bit better than previous. Of course, how many of those have been purchased by government? On the few occasions I see them on the road they have government tags or sticker denoting that this is a government fleet vehicle
(USA Today) General Motors is halting, for a month, the manufacture of its well-known Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car.
Automotive News, citing unnamed sources, reports the Detroit-Hamtramck plant will suspend production from Sept. 17 until Oct. 15.
It would be the second interruption in production for the Volt, which can go 38 miles on battery power before needing a recharge from its gasoline engine. GM late Monday disputed published reports that the move is because of slow Volt sales. GM sold 10,666 Volts through July, way up from the 2,870 sold during the same period a year earlier.
“We are not idling the plant due to poor Volt sales. We’re gearing up for production of the new Impala,” Chevy spokesman David Darovitz said in an email.
Hmm, the Impala? It gets much less miles per gallon, but, it is a favorite with businesses and rentals for business travelers, as it drives very well on the road, which means it, you know, sells. It also tends not to catch on fire when involved in a minor fender bender. And did I mention it tends to sell?
It’s unlike Mr Teach to miss a connection like that one!
Now, let’s be clear here: when a Chevrolet spokesman says, “We are not idling the plant due to poor Volt sales. We’re gearing up for production of the new Impala,” he is lying to you! This is still a tough new car market, and manufacturers don’t close down production lines for the models of automobiles that are actually selling. Volt sales have actually increased, but sales will be well below the initial sales goal of 45,000 vehicles for 2012. At the end of June, GM had an 82 day supply of Dolts in inventory, which means that Chevrolet has been building Volts faster than consumers have been buying them; of course the shutdown is due to poor Volt sales.
And, as one might guess, there’s the dirty little secret no one wants to tell you about: 12% of Volt sales were commercial and government fleet sales purchases. And why would governments buy Volts for their automobile fleets? You will not be surprised:
Localities Get Up to $33,000 in Subsidies per Chevy Volt
Submitted by Mark Modica on Mon, 04/23/2012 – 07:25
A Jacksonville.com report gives a good explanation for why some Florida localities are purchasing Chevy Volts. When Jacksonville’s chief of fleet management, Karim Kurji, was asked what the advantage of going green by purchasing Volts was he hit the nail on the head when he replied, “Federal money.” The story goes on to reveal that the total federal taxpayer money used to subsidize one Chevy Volt purchased by Atlantic Beach was over $33,000. It now appears obvious that the Obama Administration and General Motors are willing to pay just about any price, even if the taxpayers are footing the bill, to see the Chevy Volt “succeed.”
Two more Volts were purchased by the city of Jacksonville with taxpayers subsidizing about $26,500 each. Using the Atlantic Beach example, here is how taxpayers are getting bilked; the US Department of Energy gives a $25,600 grant to the locality to purchase a Volt. In return the township must keep logs. As stated in the article, “Federal grant requirements mandate that logs be kept of the Volts’ mileage, fuel use and how far they go on battery power.” The taxpayer giveaway doesn’t stop there. The dealership that sells the Volt gets the federal tax credit of $7,500 and reduces the price of the Volt (which usually sells for over $40,000) to $38,600. So, for a net cost of $13,000 the locality gets a new Volt. I guess the government has finally figured out how to sell the car that President Obama uses to pitch his green energy policies as he campaigns for reelection.
In the Jacksonville cases, the two Volt purchases were subsidized directly with about $38,000 in grants and another $15,000 in dealership subsidies. What are the gas savings for Jacksonville to justify the spending of $53,000 in subsidies for the purchase of two Volts? Kurji states, “We are getting 56 mpg for that.” How absurd has this whole Chevy Volt and green energy thing gotten? Is it any wonder America has such debt problems with such wasteful spending habits?
Of course, proponents of the Chevy Volt and Big Government will point out the small percentage of vehicles purchased in this fashion. We don’t really know the true figures, but GM claims that about 9% of Volt sales are fleet purchases. The same defense will be used as the one used when I uncovered that dealerships were selling Volts to each other and claiming the tax credits. It doesn’t happen that often, so it’s not a problem. After all, it’s “only” a few million dollars in taxpayer waste. Just add it to the multi-billion dollar tab for promoting electric vehicle development and subsidizing wealthy purchasers of the cars.
More at the link.
We have noted previously that our environmentalist friends think that the Chevrolet Volt would be an absolutely great car . . . for their neighbors. And as the General Motors’ stock chart to the right shows, investors aren’t exactly thrilled with GM’s performance: though above it’s 52 week low of 18.72, it is well below it’s 52 week high, 27.68. From Forbes:General Motors Is Headed For Bankruptcy — Again
By Louis Woodhill | 8/15/2012 @ 6:24PM
President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That’s good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again. The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market.
Right now, the federal government owns 500,000,000 shares of GM, or about 26% of the company. It would need to get about $53.00/share for these to break even on the bailout, but the stock closed at only $20.21/share on Tuesday. This left the government holding $10.1 billion worth of stock, and sitting on an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion.
Right now, the government’s GM stock is worth about 39% less than it was on November 17, 2010, when the company went public at $33.00/share. However, during the intervening time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen by almost 20%, so GM shares have lost 49% of their value relative to the Dow.
It’s doubtful that the Obama administration would attempt to sell off the government’s massive position in GM while the stock price is falling. It would be too embarrassing politically. Accordingly, if GM shares continue to decline, it is likely that Obama would ride the stock down to zero.
GM is unlikely to hit the wall before the election, but, given current trends, the company could easily do so again before the end of a second Obama term.
In the 1960s, GM averaged a 48.3% share of the U.S. car and truck market. For the first 7 months of 2012, their market share was 18.0%, down from 20.0% for the same period in 2011. With a loss of market share comes a loss of relative cost-competitiveness. There is only so much market share that GM can lose before it would no longer have the resources to attempt to recover.
More at the link.
Mr Woodhill’s prediction of another bankruptcy for General Motors isn’t shared by everyone, and Forbes published another article, this one by Micheline Maynard, which disputes Mr Woodhill’s conclusions, but even in saying that GM will probably not go bankrupt, noted, “in a sense, the perception that GM could end up in the soup again is GM’s own fault.”
The increased CAFE standards Mr Teach noted in the first article cited, 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, will require very significant new engineering changes, changes which will necessitate building smaller, lighter automobiles, the replacement of steel with aluminum (Ford announced that it would be replacing a substantial amount of steel with aluminum on its best-selling F-150 truck line; your Editor drives a 2010 F-150.), a more expensive and harder-to-work-with metal, and an enforced push on hybrids. All of these things will cost money, and will push the price of new vehicles substantially higher. This will mean that the number of people who can buy a new vehicle will fall, keeping older, less fuel-efficient vehicles on the road longer.
And the vehicle that General Motors touted as the car of the future, the Dolt? It isn’t selling because people don’t want the fool things, and many of the people who do buy them are doing so because they are, in effect, being bribed by the Obama Administration. If Mitt Romney and the Republicans win in November, count on that foolishness to end!
It comes as no new news that our editor here is an enemy of the American auto company, GM, and of the American workers whose jobs depend on the success of the company. In another breath, he will try to tell you that he is an American patriot, to which I say bull s**t!
Perhaps the Volt is not yet perfected. For one, it is too expensive. For another, it’s fuel is electricity, 42% of which is generated by burning filthy coal, down from 50% since President Obama took office, btw, a good thing regarding cleaner air and global warming.
But these obvious Volt deficiencies should not defuse the advantages of electricity powered cars, once we get our interim electricity generation on better footage, meaning less coal generation and more alternative fuels like solar, wind, and even intermediates like nuclear and natural gas, the latter emitting less carbon dioxide per BTU than either gasoline from crude oil or coal.
The problem here is that Republicans in general, and our Editor in particular, continue to be global warming deniers, in spite of the scientific consensus to the contrary.
Add this to the well known lack of vision characteristic of the Republican party, and you get some idea of the future should, perish the thought, the Republicans ever acquire power again, by hook or by crook, which is the only they have these days.
And I note in passing, that Republicans once more are blaming President Obama for the recent increases in fuel prices, when they know full well that no American President can control them in the short run. But in the long run we can acquire more control, which Republicans reject, and always have, which is the real reason we are where we are now as we speak: no foresight, no vision, no energy policy!!!
I also note that gasoline here is about 60% of that which Norwegians pay, so even at today’s prices it remains a bargain.
WW wrote:
I publish news reports that
GovernmentGeneral Motors is, once again, looking shaky, and that makes me the “an enemy of the American auto company, GM, and of the American workers whose jobs depend on the success of the company?”Now, I certainly am opposed to the government bailing out corporations, both in general, and in the specific cases of GM and Chrysler. Both should have been subject to the normal bankruptcy procedures, during which Ford would probably have snapped up successful sections of those companies.
Regardless of what the generating source of electricity, consuming electricity means that some fuel is going to be used, and that drives up the cost of electricity for all sources.
Call it karmic justice, given how much the Democrats blamed President Bush and Vice President Cheney when oil prices spiked near the end of their terms.
Well, I did want to gain more control, by conquering and annexing Iraq, and seizing their oil reserves.
But Hoagie got it right in another comment on another thread: we should be drilling in ANWR, we should have approved the Keystone pipeline, we should be taking advantage of every last opportunity to produce and get control of oil as we can.
“I also note that gasoline here is about 60% of that which Norwegians pay, so even at today’s prices it remains a bargain.”
Thataboy, tell all the middle class and poor how great a bargain they’re getting compared to Norway. That should make them happy while they work their balls off only to watch the fruits of their labor go down the shitter on the altar of glowball warming. Just to line the pockets of Hussein and Algore’s cronies. What kind of delusional idiots are these leftists? Man dosen’t make the climate, man dosen’t control the climate, and man can neither harm nor help the climate. The climate, or nature, will do whatever the hell it wants with or without the permission of the liberals. I realize you leftists would love to believe that everything under the sun is within your ability to control, but it ain’t. We can adapt to the climate but we can’t make it adapt to us.
So as you sit in your lofty perch in Lewes Delaware, driving your subsitized hy-bread and living off the fruits of someone elses labor, please remind the poor and middle class of America how they are are geting a bargain compared to ( of all stupid places ) Norway. I’m sure that will make them feel better when they’re deciding between buying a new pair of shoes for their children or heating their home for the winter. You liberals never tire of finding new ways to screw the working man all while pontificating about how wonderful you all are because you’re compassionate.
BTW, how much of the vaulted Norways price of fuel is Taxes? Since oil is a commodity and is subject to the same price fluxuations world wide you do realize the price of oil is about the same in Norway as it is here, right? The only difference is how it’s taxed. But I guess as a liberal you want to find new ways of taxing away the income of the poor and middle class. Cause that damn 1% either won’t be harmed as much or they’ll just up and leave. If you guys have your way we’ll have social justice and an economy like Kenya.
But that’s okay with liberals. You all will relax in your homes in lilly-white Lewes and enjoy your retirement. You’ll drive around your hy-breads ( subsitized by working taxpayers ) and watch “the little people” as they toil to make your retirement as comfortable as they can so you can get to the early-bird special at the local Olive Garden. ( Don’t forget your coupons! ). Then you can be waited on by a single mom trying to support her kids by waiting tables and pontificate about how evil their boss is for not paying her $20 an hour so she can afford $9 per gallon gas taxes. Hey, maybe you could raise the taxes on gas so we’re even higher than Norway. Sorry, that will come in Soetoro’s second term.
From Above:
Baltimore had a GM plant up to about 10 years ago. It’s last production vehicle was the Chevy Astro and the other GM variations. One thing that “Debunks” “We’re gearing up for production of the new Impala,” is a crock. When I worked for one construction in Baltimore, Production line retooling was done two months or so before the new model year in September. So saying they are preparing (retooling the production line) one or two weeks before the new model year is a crock.
Retooling meant making physical changes in the shape of the line for parts delivery and applications.
Hey, I’d probably buy a Volt for $6k net.
Nicely stated. Encapsulates the attitude of the entitlement class perfectly.
They had their freedom. So, now, it’s your turn to serve. See the “perfect” parallelism of their so-called logic?
And of course be grateful that you still, for now at least, have the right of free speech that you do. Don’t you know that hate speech is a crime in a progressive country like Norway? Of course, your hateful and anti-community values diatribes may have to be reined in when Obama gets a second period of “rule” here, too.
As they would say: Your lack of a cooperative attitude has been noted!
Those guilty types …
(highlighting added)
Fictitious absolutisms such as this,
Isn’t this much better?
And we better keep track of potential offenders too.
Yes, good old Norway, leads the progressive way …
In 2003 we were just below the Arctic Circle in Finland and paid $6/gal gas (1.5 Euro/liter) (it was about 1 Euro to $1)
There ARE no advantages to electric cars, except perhaps on the golf course. The Volt, it should be noted, is not a true electric car, but rather a hybrid with a big battery. Without its gas engine it would be unsellable due to the 40 mile max range of the battery.
So, if you want a hybrid, you can get one from Toyota or Honda for about $15,000 less, in which case, who needs the Volt?
I must admit, I find the prospect of GM going bankrupt (again) to be highly amusing. It is always amusing when foolishness is punished. Obama has been bragging about “Saving” GM for years, now he will have the pleasure of bailing them out again and having to admit what a huge mistake it was to reward ineptitude in the first place. Is GM making better cars? No. Are management or the unions any less incompetent? No. Should they be reawrded for screwing up a second time? No. This time, hopefully with Romney as president, they can go through a normal bankruptcy proceeding and have the company’s assets taken over by people who actually know how to make good cars, like Honda and BMW.
Uncontroversial? Not likely. The only way to make cars that average 54.5 mpg is to make teeny, tiny cars with teeny tiny engines that no one will want to buy. Unlike King Canute, Obama thinks he can recall the laws of physics.