Two points here:
- “Importers need only continue doing what they have been doing” - if they are already doing it, why do we need further regulation?

- A Japanese import car dealer goes to Japan and buys what is available. If he is restricted to choosing between fuel efficient models, there will be more demand for these. The price in Japan will rise. The price in NZ will go up. Any restriction will therefore result in an increase in car price here, and will reduce the number of newer cars people buy. It doesn’t matter if the total number of cars they are allowed to import is still the same. The regulation will still push the price up.

Trevor.

Thanks.

It seems to me the decrease in fuel usage in the US has been due to the oil price. Therefore, if a fuel efficient car makes travel cheaper, use is unlikely to drop off.

You overlook an important element in pick-up truck/SUV CAFE saga that alters the political perspective significantly. The original exclusion of light trucks and vans from CAFE made sense in the 1970s as they were basic commercial vehicles and a small and shrinking part of the automakers market. The unit cost of getting these vehicles to comply with passenger car standards for safety, emissions or fuel economy would have had a serious impact on farmers and tradespeople. In the early 1980s Lee Iococa stumbled on the loophole when a desperate nearly bankrupt Chrysler repeated the Mustang approach to replace the traditional big American station wagon with a car-like passenger van using a front wheel drive car chassis. Although the objective had simply been to provide the interior space of a big car in a short tall “car” cheaply by putting a new body on an existing chassis the result was a vehicle classified by the EPA as a “van” and thus gave Chrysler credits with the LTV CAFE mpg rather than being penalised with the car mpg. The EPA couldn’t change the rules as they were set by congress and since these vehicles (MPVs) proved popular as car-pool vehicles it seemed best to keep the status quo. In the late 80s when Chrysler launched a limited edition luxury Jeep model and found themselves with a runaway winner on their hands the EPA repeatedly sought an amendment to get four-door light trucks classified as cars but Congress repeatedly refused because this was a class of vehicle that the was unique to the American makers and thus great for local employment and the balance of payments, etc, etc. Essentially, environmental protection lost out to economic protection. The Clinton administration was the worst offender, actually vetoing any increases in the CAFE standards because it would benefit imports. It’s a real mystery why the Bush adminitration got the ball rolling for the new CAFE standards in it’s first term. But I guess the politics of environmental protection versus economic protection is something you’ve become all to familiar with over the last decade.

I’m not overly worried about the difference in the two estimates of savings fro the MEPS. That’s to be expected with estimates over short periods for things that are hard to measure acurately. Different assumptions about the proportion of new appliances being either repacemnts or additions to existing appliances could explain the difference. The important thing is that, whatever the number might really be, it can only get bigger over time as as existing appliances die of old age.

Finally, bp needs to google “energy efficiency rebound effect” to find out just how little of the energy or money saved is spent on bigger or more appliances/cars or more use of the more efficient ones, when controlled for increases in household incomes.

And that would be a bad thing because? I’m not giving you shit, just genuinely interested. I would think an ageing fleet would be a shrinking fleet? Is that what you’re meaning?

Sadly the Greens see something they want - more fuel efficient vehicles in the fleet. Take their favourite solution - ban those that aren’t from entering the market. Ignore the economic consequences that the price of what they want increases as a result, meaning people hold on to less efficient and less safe vehicles for longer. Europe and the USA can afford to set these standards as they are far richer economies per capita, and the secondhand car markets are equally so, producing a minor effect. The best way to get a more fuel efficient car fleet is to get out of the way of people buying new cars.

You’ll surely end up with a situation of an aging fleet because fewer people will be able to afford a newer model car.

>>There are 2 ways to do it:

They take no account of the frequency of use? As fuel efficiency rises, people drive their cars more.

Given US vehicle usage is down, as are new car sales (except in the fuel efficient group), it appears market forces (i.e. fuel cost) have more influence.