> the reason cars don't get better gas mileage today is because
> the auto companies don't want - and haven't ever really
> wanted - to make fuel efficient cars.
I see it's tin-foil-hat time on lbo-talk!
I think this is backwards: it's not that they don't want to, it's that given their druthers they'd prefer to do nothing. Which is a good argument for "big government" -- because the government is the only force that can accomplish Change(tm) ... consumers are lousy at it: do you want to pay more next year for a bigger car with a juicier engine, or do you want to pay more next year for better gas mileage?
Homer says: mmm, delicious donuts.
IMHO, we're nearing the limits for fuel efficiency (and have been there for some time); the next round of big changes will have to come from structural engineering changes in vehicles to bring down the weight and wind resistence dramatically[*] ... unfortunately, it would have been easier to move from 2000# cars to 750# cars than it will be now to go from 3500# cars to 750# cars ... :-(
> For all that what Shag sees is true, it was pretty remarkable
> that - after whining for 30 years that they just couldn't possibly
> generate auto fleets with the average CAFE standards set in the
> late 1970s - in less than a year the Big 3 have suddenly found
> themselves able to raise fleet averages by 5-7 mpg and have
> accepted that they're going to have to go up a great deal more
> soon... shocking, they must have hired some new, really good
> engineers over the last 18 months... ;-(
I don't think they ever said they "couldn't" -- they just said they didn't want to. And the government that they bought didn't make them. So instead, the consumer got to set the mileage: bigger cars, bigger engines, lower mileage. In the realm of CAFE standards, the dial can go up as easily as it goes down. The "miracle" you speak of is just a question of reversing the tide: smaller engines, lighter cars. But 5-7mpg isn't going to change the world very much: we need 100+mpg cars last decade.
/jordan
[*] cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercar