UAW President Bob King Endorses 54.5 MPG CAFE Rules

Derek Kreindler
by Derek Kreindler

UAW president Bob King endorsed the 54.5 MPG CAFE standard for passenger vehicles while testifying at CAFE related hearings in Detroit. Automotive News quoted King as saying “The proposed rules are sensible, achievable and needed.” The standards would have to be met by 2025 and work out to about 40 mpg in the real world.

Derek Kreindler
Derek Kreindler

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  • Da Coyote Da Coyote on Jan 17, 2012

    Good grief, he's the UAW leader. This means: 1. He couldn't pass an elementary mech engineering course. 2. He's a crook. 3. He knows nothing about cars. 4. He (obviously) knows nothing about people who like cars. 5. He's probably never done an honest day's work in his life. 6. He makes roughly 25x the average UAW worker's salary. 7. He doesn't give a smelly Obama about his fellow union members.

  • "scarey" "scarey" on Jan 18, 2012

    Bob King=Elton John lookalike

  • Rrhyne56 Rrhyne56 on Jan 18, 2012

    Considering that union bosses have no one's interests at heart other than their own, it gives one pause to consider how this position is posed to line their already silver coated pockets?

  • Geeber Geeber on Jan 18, 2012
    Carlson Fan: Well at least maybe they won’t be able to afford to waste it anymore. No, they won't be able to afford it, period, which is hardly a desirable outcome. Just because someone is using gasoline in a way that you don't like doesn't mean that they are "wasting it." Carlson Fan: And that alone should get us off imported oil while promoting mass transit, alternative energy vehicles and life styles that don’t include 70 mile daily commutes to get to a job and back home. As I posted above, Europe has very high gasoline prices, and imports virtually all of its oil. When I was in Germany in 2004, I paid between $6-7 for a gallon of gasoline. The idea that we will switch to mass transit is a fantasy. We don't have the population density to support it in most areas. In those areas with higher population density - New York City, for example - mass transit is viable. In Europe, cars account for 80 percent of the distance traveled in every western European country except Austria, Denmark and Ireland. This is on a continent with high gasoline prices and much higher population density than the United States (the United States, for example, has less than 1/6 the population desnity of Germany). We already have an extensive rail network. We use it to transport goods, while Europe uses its rail network to move people. We ship over three times as much freight per capita in the United States than the European nation with the highest rail-freight usage (Sweden). Meanwhile, all European nations send a higher percentage of freight by road than the United States. redav: Gasoline takes up too much space. A ‘dealer’ would need a facility so large (probably the size of, oh, maybe a gas station) that he can’t move/hide it. Tanker trucks can be easily hijacked - which already has happened with tractor trailers. Unlike the goods contained in most hijacked tractor trailers, it will be virtually impossible to trace gasoline once it is sold and used by the customer. redav: Gasoline isn’t something that someone can cook up in his garage, which means he will have to get it from refineries, and good luck doing that. (I don’t see anyone sneaking a oil tanker across the border, either.) As I said, trucks carrying gasoline can be hijacked. If it becomes profitable enough, some of the refined oil leaving the refinery may mysteriously "disappear" before it is loaded on to the tractor trailer. Carlson Fan: As far as crime, it’s more likely that more poor people will simply not be able to afford a car and so won’t buy gas. Since they don’t need gas, they aren’t going to commit crime to get the money to pay for it. You are assuming that people will simply give up the car. Sorry, but that is unlikely to happen, as people will do anything to keep driving, particularly in rural areas. In Philadelphia, automobile insurance became prohibitively expensive about 15 years ago. Using your hypothesis, Philadelphians would have simply given up their cars. After all, Philadelphians can use the extensive mass transit system provided by SEPTA (the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority). What really happened is that, at any one point, over one third of all cars on the road in Philadelphia were not covered by any vehicle insurance. People used every trick they could to keep driving, including snipping the registration sticker from the corner of other vehicles' license plates (the registration sticker, renewed annually, requires proof of insurance), and breaking into cars to steal the owner's name and registration information, and using it to obtain "cloned" vehicle registration stickers.
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