Higher Gas Mileage – No Matter What it Costs You

A court just ordered that you will pay more to use less gas.

The court did not put it quite that way, of course – courts specializing in not putting things directly, much less honestly.

Like the government – which the courts serve.

The issue at hand was whether car companies should be triple fined by the government for not “complying” with regulatory decrees pertaining to how many miles the cars they make can travel on a gallon of gas. And how much higher those minimums are to be – as well as how soon.

The mandatory minimum number of miles new cars must travel per gallon – or else –  has been increasing each decade since the ’70s, when the government first got into the business of telling car companies how far their cars must go – and how much you’ll pay to get there.

These MPG mandates – and attendant fines for not meeting them – cost you in other ways, too. They killed off large family sedans and station wagons, which were replaced by large SUVs and pick-ups which cost much more than the extincted-by-the-regs large family sedans and wagons. For a time, trucks and SUVs were subject to lower mandatory MPG minimums by an accident of regulatory categorization – they were “light trucks” rather than “passenger cars” – and so the car industry built more of the former to satisfy the market demand for the latter, thwarted by the regs.

But the government caught up – and that’s why trucks and SUVs got so expensive. They are going to become largely unaffordable – and so, very scarce.

Because the mandatory minimum is back on track to almost double from what it originally was when CAFE – Corporate Average Fuel Economy – regulations were first imposed, to an average of nearly 50 miles-per-gallon by about five years from now.

The fines for not meeting that “goal” are to be tripled – from $5.50 for every 0.1 MPG they fall below the standard to $14.

The cost of these fines to be passed on to you, too – in the obvious form of more expensive cars and the subtle form of fewer choices. There are only a couple of non-electric cars on the market right now that can travel 50 miles on a gallon of gasoline and they are almost electric cars.

Hybrids, like the Toyota Prius and the Kia Niro – which also cost several thousand dollars more than an otherwise equivalent non-hybrid car.

There are no full-size trucks or SUVs on the market that can travel 35 miles on a gallon of gas and no car larger than a compact with an engine larger than a small four can travel 40. The reason so many cars – even larger ones – now come with small fours is because of mandatory MPG minimums. As these minimums increase, there will be fewer cars – and much more expensive SUVs and pick-ups.

Also more electric vehicles – since they are essentially exempted from CAFE even though they burn through petrochemicals, too. Just at a distance. And, at a cost – not merely in money, either.

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