The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that all new cars that aren’t electric must average 55 miles per gallon by 2026.
This amounts to a Great Leap Forward of almost 20 miles per gallon from the currently ordered 36 miles per gallon that all new cars must achieve, else their manufacturers be punished for making them via “gas guzzler” fines applied to them.
Which are then passed on to the people who buy them. Which makes it progressively more difficult to afford them.
That being the point of the fines, you understand.
The Biden administration considers it their right and duty to punish you for buying the car you want if it doesn’t do what they like.
The free market being an intolerable affront to them. Can’t have supply and demand determined by … supply and demand. That would be even worse a thing than free association.
The administration will say they are “saving you money on gas” via their “rules.” Which is true in the same way that “ruling” you must live in a small apartment in the city “saves” you the bother of having to cut a lawn. They do not say anything about the cost of the apartment — including the diminishment of your personal space — and your control over it.
Nor, of course, do they say anything about using “rules” to make you pay more for what you don’t want. An affront which brings us to the following fact:
Right now, only two new (2022 model year) cars meet the new “rule” — just barely. They are the Toyota Prius and the Hyundai Ioniq.
Both are partially electric cars (i.e., hybrids) and also small cars designed to be primarily economical cars. They are not bad cars. Indeed, they have their merits — chief among them their ability to average about 55 miles per gallon. But they are not cars most people want — or else you’d already see most people driving them.
Italics to make the point.
Why then aren’t most people driving them — assuming (as the Biden administration insists) that “saving gas” is the most important consideration motivating car buyers? The answer, of course, is that it isn’t — even though Biden has caused the cost of gas to almost double in less than 12 months.
Small hybrids are wonderful — as commuter cars and cars for single people and even small (emphasis on small) families. They are inadequate for large families and the bottom line fact is that many — most people — do not want to drive a small hybrid car, even if it does average 55 miles per gallon.
They prefer to drive some other kind of car. More precisely, a crossover or an SUV, or a pick-up, the three most popular kinds of vehicles — by far. None of which averages 55 miles per gallon.
There isn’t a single car — without batteries and motors — that meets this standard or comes even close to averaging it.
A few non-hybrid medium-small cars manage just slightly more than 40 miles per gallon … on the highway.
They average much less.
Consider what that implies about the purpose of this New Rule.
