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Cult Watch Title: Obama's 60-mpg cars could cost up to $9,000 more (sophisticated gas-electric hybrid, O'mobiles) Advocates and lobbyists say today the Obama administration will unveil a plan for fuel-economy standards on cars as high as 62 miles per gallon in 2025. Timing aside, the cost to you could be significant. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an advocacy group that favors the 60 mpg standard, says such a regulation would boost the price of a car an average $2,700 in today's dollars, and you'd make that back in 4.5 years on fuel savings. But a June report from a respected scientific group -- while not directly addressing 60 mpg -- suggests car buyers could pay more than that: The report, by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), forecast prices of various fuel-saving technologies. The baseline was a conventional gasoline car with a low-tech engine -- no direct-injection, no turbocharging, no cylinder-cutoff, etc. Whatever you'd pay for that kind of car, add $9,000 to the price to get a sophisticated gas-electric hybrid that'd use half as much fuel, the NAS report said. That's a lot more than today's "hybrid premium" of $4,000 or less. In fact, Ford Motor's Lincoln brand has eliminated the premium, pricing its 2011 Lincoln MKZ hybrid sedan at the same $35,180 as the gasoline version of that car. An unsettling aspect of the NAS figure is that the kind of hybrid that'd cost you the additional $9,000 probably wouldn't meet the 60-mpg target. It'd only help an automaker get partway there. To average 60 mpg or so would require many vehicles that get better mileage than that. The NRDC figures that only about 30% of 2025 vehicles could be conventional gasoline vehiclesfor the industry to meet a 60-mpg standard. The rest would have to be advanced hybrids and battery cars. Current mileage regulations run though 2016 and require the auto industry as a whole to hit 35.5 mpg (though a credit of 1 mpg or so can come from other clean-air initiatives that don't boost a car's fuel economy). The government plan for 2017 to 2025 that's expected today is likely to say that the eventual 2025 number should be set between 47 and 62 miles per gallon, leaving some leeway for a less-costly target. Because the rule-making process takes a long time, a final 2025 standard isn't likely to be set in concrete until 2012.
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#1. To: hondo68 (#0)
You can't make this stuff up.
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