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The CAFE regulations have been a disaster for the safety and affordability of vehicles and US regulators need to figure out a way to legislate fuel effeciency i

The CAFE regulations have been a disaster for the safety and affordability of vehicles and US regulators need to figure out a way to legislate fuel effeciency in such a way that doesnt lead to the difference between a 1990's F-150 and a 2020's F-150. It would also do the US a world of good to get rid of the chicken truck import tax.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
oatmeal1 3y ago
They just need to close the "light truck" exception that allows vehicle manufacturers to skirt the rules with SUVs and trucks. They won't though.
- bertil 3y ago
  No need to close it: just demand a commercial license to drive one of those. Yearly check-up, learn to look at your blind sides. If you mess up, lose your job. If those are getting tax benefits for being used by specialized industries, they should be treated as such. I want emission standards, but if you tell me that we don’t get a snowplow without exception, I’m amenable. Snow on the road is bad. Where we should all draw the line is having soccer moms do the school run in a snowplow.
- riversflow 3y ago
  Perhaps the light truck exemption should stay, but all exempt vehicles pay a punitive mileage tax. My feeling here is that pickups as _actual_ tool/utility vehicles is valid, but we should punish the use of such dangerous vehicles when they don’t serve a purpose. A tradesmen owning a truck that he uses to transport materials and tools is one thing. The dude who works in sales at a software company and has used the bed once since he bought the truck to go camping is another. I’m not sure though, the overarching problem is that the US is vast, and what is good in one place is bad in the other. A large 4x4 truck is a menace in a dense city, but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow. Both are common.
  - ska 3y ago
    > but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow. That's a false dichotomy. 4x4 cars often do better on poor roads and snow, lower center of gravity is better if you don't need ground clearance, and weight distribution of a pickup isn't great for snow etc. unloaded. Of course this assuming actual roads, not off-road. The whole 4x4 truck things is even more complicated - good off-road performance and good freeway performance are in many ways at cross purposes. The real intrinsic value of a pickup is open air bed space (easier access than a van, but less protected), I don't mean they don't do other things well, just that is what the form factor gets you. The way the market developed they have also turned into the vehicle of choice for towing, but that's not intrinsic, just useful. Outside of 5th wheels, I suppose, where you need the platform. That isn't most towing in that size. The % of light pickups is more a regulatory incentive and marketing phenomena than a reflection of real utility.
  - cheekibreeki2 3y ago
    In the usa we live in a largely lawless society I don't know who is gonna enforce something like that when we barely go after armed teen carjackers.
  - Enginerrrd 3y ago
    This won't work because the people with the greatest need also have the least ability to pay. It would only make sense if you include a measure of how urban the area is.
  - davchana 3y ago
    California already treats every vehicle with a bed as commercial (& thus weight fee), very rare exceptions. Although there are subgroups within that rightfully based on vehicle weight.
  - NegativeLatency 3y ago
    > car is crap in places with poor roads and snow My FWD Volvo Station wagon would like a word with you There are (or were) plenty of small cars that did great off road that are no longer sold in the US, if I was looking for a new car and could buy one in the US I'd consider something like the Sizuki IGNIS where it's got 4WD and can hold people comfortably.
kelseyfrog 3y ago
Given that that "Chicken War" ended in 1964, that sounds fairly uncontroversial.
hristov 3y ago
The CAFE regulations are not causing this, in fact they are acting in the opposite direction, making vehicles safer. More aerodynamic vehicles are more fuel efficient and more likely to have lower and more sloped fronts and thus are also safer for pedestrians. Furthermore, vehicles with higher fuel efficiency tend to have smaller engines and thus also have shorter noses and more sloped hoods which make them safer for pedestrians. The only connection with the CAFE regulations you can make is that they are obviously not strict enough. Especially when it comes to trucks and SUVs. And I fully agree with this. Stricter CAFE regulations would help not only with emissions but with pedestrian safety. The main reason for the difference between a 1990s f150 and 2020s f150 is that people have been preferring to buy bigger trucks and Ford has catered to that preference by making the trucks bigger CAFE regulations be dammed. To their credit Ford has done some very good r&d work, trying to keep their ever larger trucks relatively fuel efficient, such as by their very well publicized conversion to aluminum. But they could and should be doing more and the government should be doing more to force them to do more.
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  Leaving a giant loophole for trucks and very heavy vehicles is why they are causing this, by incentivizing a class of vehicles to get heavier than they otherwise would.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- paulgerhardt 3y ago
  They are not making trucks bigger despite CAFE regulations. They are making trucks bigger because of CAFE regulations. This video details why: https://youtu.be/azI3nqrHEXM https://youtu.be/azI3nqrHEXM The short version is there is an exploit to meet standards by increasing footprint that is easier to implement than to make vehicles more fuel efficient. That exploit needs to be nerfed.
- sjburt 3y ago
  Starting in 2014, trucks with a larger size were subject to less strict fuel efficiency requirements. This was because American automakers (who sell a lot more trucks) were unable to compete with foreign automakers that sold a lot of passenger cars that could bring their CAFE down. However, the government screwed up the scaling factor and it basically became impossible to build a small truck, while larger trucks had much easier-to-meet requirements. That led to automakers basically abandoning the passenger car market, and upsizing trucks significantly.
jgeada 3y ago
It doesn't help that vehicular manslaughter is basically not punished at all in the US. You can run over a pedestrian or cyclist due to inattention or dangerous driving and get away with a no-jail sentence of community service of 60 days or so. The incentives are all aligned to maximize vehicle use and minimize any inconvenience to incompetent vehicle owners, regardless of the death toll.
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  + civil penalties from the family of the slaughtered.
- jplrssn 3y ago
  I agree that is outrageous. But I'd imagine most people don't consider the survivability of pedestrians in a collision when they buy a car, since people generally overestimate their driving ability and underestimate their likelihood of ending up in an accident. So harsher penalties might not improve car designs much.
  - alamortsubite 3y ago
    If harsher penalties were adopted only in the case of killing or injuring someone, perhaps not, but if we made fines for all moving violations proportional to vehicle weight, people might suddenly be more thoughtful.
  - snthd 3y ago
    You're on to something there - apply the penalties to manufacturers.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      It is arguably weird that no-one has successfully taken this approach; _in general_, if you make a thing, and then knowingly make a less safe version of a thing, and it kills someone due to your changes, then, well, you'll want a good lawyer. But cars do seem to be treated as something of a special case; all the responsibility is on the operator, even as the product is made knowingly more dangerous to bystanders.
Pxtl 3y ago
This isn't just CAFE. Even a giant road-tank could still have nice rounded low bumper that is compatible with pedestrians and other vehicles. I mean, an F-150 Lightning has great emissions. It will also crush me into chunky marinara it hits me with its brick-wall grill and 9000lbs of bulk.
xyst 3y ago
Why can’t CAFE regulations just be modified to include these modern SUVs and trucks? If the exclusions are removed then the manufacture cafe ratings across products will go down. Thus be forced to be more efficient and sell smaller cars.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Because no one in power wants to make the cars that most people want to buy more expensive.
  - Nifty3929 3y ago
    It's slightly different than that. The light truck sales essentially pay for all of the other regulations the politicians want. They regulate all other vehicles into unprofitability, but avoid destroying the manufacturers by allowing them to make all their money on huge "light" trucks. If they didn't have this exception, they wouldn't be able to enact all the other regulations without killing the auto industry.
  - trgn 3y ago
    People are stupid, and tastes can be manufactured. There's nothing set in stone in human psychology that Americans need an SUV. People are only buying because the current incentive structures, convoluted and interwoven as they are, converge in SUVs and trucks as the current default.
raydev 3y ago
This is constantly brought up as the primary cause, but I think people forget that SUVs and trucks started their expansion in the mid/late 90s, before the modern CAFE regulations. The people demanded bigger and they got bigger. We had entire news cycles about the size of the Ford Excursion and GM's Hummer 1 back in the day.
- CWuestefeld 3y ago
  No. CAFE regulations started in the mid 70s. As it's evolved hand-in-hand with the auto industry, it's led to the death of the station wagon and the rise of the minivan, and only later did the proliferation of SUVs start. Corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards are regulations in the United States, first enacted by the United States Congress in 1975,[1] after the 1973–74 Arab Oil Embargo, to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks (trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles) produced for sale in the United States. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > but I think people forget that SUVs and trucks started their expansion in the mid/late 90s, before the modern CAFE regulations. CAFE was adopted in 1975 and effective from 1978. Are you confusing "modern CAFE regulations" with the late 2000s narrowing of the "car" and "light truck" CAFE regulations (which, yes, did push automakers to try to push more vehicles that fell out of the "light truck" category, just as the earlier standards pushed from cars to light trucks), which has effectively shifted back the old gap after the actual (and more complex) modern (2011+) regulations came into play.
Nifty3929 3y ago
The correct answer is to not directly regulate autos themselves, but instead to implement a universal carbon emissions tax that would apply to any and all sources themselves (e.g. gasoline, propane, cement, etc), proportional to the amount of carbon emitted. No carve-outs or exceptions. No offsets. No protected industries. No change with scale (volume discount). Then you let people/companies figure out all on their own how to respond to that tax. And yeah, the chicken tax along with all the other tariffs can go.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

oatmeal1 3y ago

They just need to close the "light truck" exception that allows vehicle manufacturers to skirt the rules with SUVs and trucks. They won't though.

bertil 3y ago
No need to close it: just demand a commercial license to drive one of those. Yearly check-up, learn to look at your blind sides. If you mess up, lose your job. If those are getting tax benefits for being used by specialized industries, they should be treated as such. I want emission standards, but if you tell me that we don’t get a snowplow without exception, I’m amenable. Snow on the road is bad. Where we should all draw the line is having soccer moms do the school run in a snowplow.
riversflow 3y ago
Perhaps the light truck exemption should stay, but all exempt vehicles pay a punitive mileage tax. My feeling here is that pickups as _actual_ tool/utility vehicles is valid, but we should punish the use of such dangerous vehicles when they don’t serve a purpose. A tradesmen owning a truck that he uses to transport materials and tools is one thing. The dude who works in sales at a software company and has used the bed once since he bought the truck to go camping is another. I’m not sure though, the overarching problem is that the US is vast, and what is good in one place is bad in the other. A large 4x4 truck is a menace in a dense city, but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow. Both are common.
- ska 3y ago
  > but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow. That's a false dichotomy. 4x4 cars often do better on poor roads and snow, lower center of gravity is better if you don't need ground clearance, and weight distribution of a pickup isn't great for snow etc. unloaded. Of course this assuming actual roads, not off-road. The whole 4x4 truck things is even more complicated - good off-road performance and good freeway performance are in many ways at cross purposes. The real intrinsic value of a pickup is open air bed space (easier access than a van, but less protected), I don't mean they don't do other things well, just that is what the form factor gets you. The way the market developed they have also turned into the vehicle of choice for towing, but that's not intrinsic, just useful. Outside of 5th wheels, I suppose, where you need the platform. That isn't most towing in that size. The % of light pickups is more a regulatory incentive and marketing phenomena than a reflection of real utility.
- cheekibreeki2 3y ago
  In the usa we live in a largely lawless society I don't know who is gonna enforce something like that when we barely go after armed teen carjackers.
- Enginerrrd 3y ago
  This won't work because the people with the greatest need also have the least ability to pay. It would only make sense if you include a measure of how urban the area is.
- davchana 3y ago
  California already treats every vehicle with a bed as commercial (& thus weight fee), very rare exceptions. Although there are subgroups within that rightfully based on vehicle weight.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  > car is crap in places with poor roads and snow My FWD Volvo Station wagon would like a word with you There are (or were) plenty of small cars that did great off road that are no longer sold in the US, if I was looking for a new car and could buy one in the US I'd consider something like the Sizuki IGNIS where it's got 4WD and can hold people comfortably.

kelseyfrog 3y ago

Given that that "Chicken War" ended in 1964, that sounds fairly uncontroversial.

hristov 3y ago

The CAFE regulations are not causing this, in fact they are acting in the opposite direction, making vehicles safer. More aerodynamic vehicles are more fuel efficient and more likely to have lower and more sloped fronts and thus are also safer for pedestrians. Furthermore, vehicles with higher fuel efficiency tend to have smaller engines and thus also have shorter noses and more sloped hoods which make them safer for pedestrians. The only connection with the CAFE regulations you can make is that they are obviously not strict enough. Especially when it comes to trucks and SUVs. And I fully agree with this. Stricter CAFE regulations would help not only with emissions but with pedestrian safety. The main reason for the difference between a 1990s f150 and 2020s f150 is that people have been preferring to buy bigger trucks and Ford has catered to that preference by making the trucks bigger CAFE regulations be dammed. To their credit Ford has done some very good r&d work, trying to keep their ever larger trucks relatively fuel efficient, such as by their very well publicized conversion to aluminum. But they could and should be doing more and the government should be doing more to force them to do more.

baggy_trough 3y ago
Leaving a giant loophole for trucks and very heavy vehicles is why they are causing this, by incentivizing a class of vehicles to get heavier than they otherwise would.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
paulgerhardt 3y ago
They are not making trucks bigger despite CAFE regulations. They are making trucks bigger because of CAFE regulations. This video details why: https://youtu.be/azI3nqrHEXM https://youtu.be/azI3nqrHEXM The short version is there is an exploit to meet standards by increasing footprint that is easier to implement than to make vehicles more fuel efficient. That exploit needs to be nerfed.
sjburt 3y ago
Starting in 2014, trucks with a larger size were subject to less strict fuel efficiency requirements. This was because American automakers (who sell a lot more trucks) were unable to compete with foreign automakers that sold a lot of passenger cars that could bring their CAFE down. However, the government screwed up the scaling factor and it basically became impossible to build a small truck, while larger trucks had much easier-to-meet requirements. That led to automakers basically abandoning the passenger car market, and upsizing trucks significantly.

jgeada 3y ago

It doesn't help that vehicular manslaughter is basically not punished at all in the US. You can run over a pedestrian or cyclist due to inattention or dangerous driving and get away with a no-jail sentence of community service of 60 days or so. The incentives are all aligned to maximize vehicle use and minimize any inconvenience to incompetent vehicle owners, regardless of the death toll.

sleepybrett 3y ago
+ civil penalties from the family of the slaughtered.
jplrssn 3y ago
I agree that is outrageous. But I'd imagine most people don't consider the survivability of pedestrians in a collision when they buy a car, since people generally overestimate their driving ability and underestimate their likelihood of ending up in an accident. So harsher penalties might not improve car designs much.
- alamortsubite 3y ago
  If harsher penalties were adopted only in the case of killing or injuring someone, perhaps not, but if we made fines for all moving violations proportional to vehicle weight, people might suddenly be more thoughtful.
- snthd 3y ago
  You're on to something there - apply the penalties to manufacturers.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    It is arguably weird that no-one has successfully taken this approach; _in general_, if you make a thing, and then knowingly make a less safe version of a thing, and it kills someone due to your changes, then, well, you'll want a good lawyer. But cars do seem to be treated as something of a special case; all the responsibility is on the operator, even as the product is made knowingly more dangerous to bystanders.

Pxtl 3y ago

This isn't just CAFE. Even a giant road-tank could still have nice rounded low bumper that is compatible with pedestrians and other vehicles. I mean, an F-150 Lightning has great emissions. It will also crush me into chunky marinara it hits me with its brick-wall grill and 9000lbs of bulk.

xyst 3y ago

Why can’t CAFE regulations just be modified to include these modern SUVs and trucks? If the exclusions are removed then the manufacture cafe ratings across products will go down. Thus be forced to be more efficient and sell smaller cars.

kelnos 3y ago
Because no one in power wants to make the cars that most people want to buy more expensive.
- Nifty3929 3y ago
  It's slightly different than that. The light truck sales essentially pay for all of the other regulations the politicians want. They regulate all other vehicles into unprofitability, but avoid destroying the manufacturers by allowing them to make all their money on huge "light" trucks. If they didn't have this exception, they wouldn't be able to enact all the other regulations without killing the auto industry.
- trgn 3y ago
  People are stupid, and tastes can be manufactured. There's nothing set in stone in human psychology that Americans need an SUV. People are only buying because the current incentive structures, convoluted and interwoven as they are, converge in SUVs and trucks as the current default.

raydev 3y ago

This is constantly brought up as the primary cause, but I think people forget that SUVs and trucks started their expansion in the mid/late 90s, before the modern CAFE regulations. The people demanded bigger and they got bigger. We had entire news cycles about the size of the Ford Excursion and GM's Hummer 1 back in the day.

CWuestefeld 3y ago
No. CAFE regulations started in the mid 70s. As it's evolved hand-in-hand with the auto industry, it's led to the death of the station wagon and the rise of the minivan, and only later did the proliferation of SUVs start. Corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards are regulations in the United States, first enacted by the United States Congress in 1975,[1] after the 1973–74 Arab Oil Embargo, to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks (trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles) produced for sale in the United States. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
dragonwriter 3y ago
> but I think people forget that SUVs and trucks started their expansion in the mid/late 90s, before the modern CAFE regulations. CAFE was adopted in 1975 and effective from 1978. Are you confusing "modern CAFE regulations" with the late 2000s narrowing of the "car" and "light truck" CAFE regulations (which, yes, did push automakers to try to push more vehicles that fell out of the "light truck" category, just as the earlier standards pushed from cars to light trucks), which has effectively shifted back the old gap after the actual (and more complex) modern (2011+) regulations came into play.

Nifty3929 3y ago

The correct answer is to not directly regulate autos themselves, but instead to implement a universal carbon emissions tax that would apply to any and all sources themselves (e.g. gasoline, propane, cement, etc), proportional to the amount of carbon emitted. No carve-outs or exceptions. No offsets. No protected industries. No change with scale (volume discount). Then you let people/companies figure out all on their own how to respond to that tax. And yeah, the chicken tax along with all the other tariffs can go.