Government Grades for Cars
by Jeffrey Miron on September 1st, 2010
4 Comments
WASHINGTON—The government proposed labeling each new passenger vehicle with a letter grade from A to D based on its fuel efficiency and emissions, part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to promote electric cars and other advanced-technology vehicles. …
Under the system, the only cars that would receive an A-plus, A or A-minus would be electrics and plug-in hybrids, the government said.
Anyone confused about what the agenda is here?
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dWj
A little bit confused. It could be arrogance — even though all the information relevant to the environment or cost is already required to be disclosed, we’re going to have our technocrats make up something because they’re better than, you know, reality — or it could be corruption — someone has an investment of some kind in some of the technology, and wouldn’t want a 100MPG gasoline engine to compete on a level playing field with it. There may even be other alternatives, but “arrogance” and “corruption” seem like the obvious choices. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Ricardo Cruz
Their energy efficiency grading system is pretty myopic. What if more fuel efficient cars come up in a few years from now? Will they give them a A++++, or maybe start using the Greek alphabet?
Btw, I wonder what would happen if foreign manufactured cars started getting better grades… I bet they would suspend the program pretty rapidly.
Jess Austin
Talk about grade inflation: why is there no F?
Ricardo, Government Motors already makes something called the “Volt”. I expect the panjandrums will find this union-built product is the most efficient and least emmissive vehicle humanity could possibly conceive this century. Any rival with the temerity to exceed the Volt’s performance on some or all measures will be grudgingly awarded the same grade, and the details will be buried in unread reports. Meanwhile, “safety” standards will be continuously rejiggered to exclude vehicles used overseas that are already more efficient than the Volt. The real dilemma for regulators will arise in about ten years when someone starts selling a car that is more efficient than the Volt and much cheaper. Then we’ll know whether this is about protectionism or nannyism.
Boyd K
So many issues we desperately need leadership on. A manufacturing sector that isn’t, exports that aren’t, freedoms that aren’t fashionable… and this is what we get. Still I guess I can hope that pushing a system that is easily ignored keeps them from spending that time making real problems worse.
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