MOTOR MOUTH
AUTOMAKERS CAN BUILD EFFICIENT CARS BUT DO BUYERS CARE?
It turns out that holding automakers’ feet to the fire is good government policy. You may remember the howls back in 2012 from corporate offices decrying the impossibility of meeting the United States’ then-radical 54.5-mpg-by-2025 fuel economy regulations without bankrupting the citizenry and throwing the domestic auto industry, focused as they are on profit-generating pickups, into turmoil.
It turns out we’re ahead of schedule and the cost estimates put forward in 2012 aren’t that far out of whack. In fact, the American National Research Council report, Effectiveness and Deployment of Fuel Economy Technologies for LightDuty Vehicles, makes it sound like it won’t be difficult at all.
According to the report — to serve as a guideline for the mandated 2017 program review by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — by 2025 the typical mid-sized sedan will exceed 54.5 miles per U.S. gallon. Further, it can be done without mass electrification and, despite the automakers’ scary predictions, the cost of making the family four-door meet the standards will be somewhere between $1,081 and $1,658 (all figures in U.S. dollars).
“Basically, the agencies got the cost and effectiveness projections right (the original estimate in 2012 was $1,060),” Daniel Becker, director of the Washington-based Safe Climate Campaign, told Automotive News. “There’s no justification for weakening the standards at the midterm review.”
The report did question the willingness of the consuming public to buy into fuel economy, the NRC calling for the agencies to focus on why motorists are failing to see the longterm savings of more fuel-efficient vehicles. Since the regulations are based on the vehicles actually sold, the public’s continued rejection of hybrids and electric vehicles and the soaring popularity of pickups is the one sore point in the report. Indeed, after increasing to 25.3 mpg in 2014 from 23.5 mpg in 2012, the average fuel economy for cars sold in the U.S. remained stagnant for the 2015 model year, fuel economy only beginning to increase again in May thanks to increasing gas prices, says the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.
What’s interesting are the technologies the NRC sees as promoting fuel economy in the near future. Stressing that the internal combustion engine will still be the predominant powertrain 10 years hence, the study is optimistic that automakers can reduce vehicle weight at a reasonable cost. The study estimates that incorporating enough magnesium, aluminum and carbon fibre to reduce weight by 20 per cent will cost between $917 and $1,330, less than the NHTSA and EPA figures.
More interesting is that one of the engine technologies the NRC seems most charged up about is the electrically assisted supercharger. Essentially, a turbocharger that only operates when needed (unlike, say, those gas-guzzling Ford EcoBoost engines that deliver little promised frugality), the NRC says that variable-speed superchargers are good for a 26 per cent decrease in fuel consumption, only a few percentage points less than the much-hyped hybrid technology (and way better than the 8 per cent it estimates for turbocharging). These computer-controlled superchargers are also relatively cost effective, costing only $1,302 more than a conventional engine compared to the $2,500 the report approximates for conventional hybrids and the roughly $9,000 increased cost of a PHEV.
So, what does the future hold, at least for those driving moderately sized family cars? If the NRC’s optimism holds, in 2025 we’ll be driving around in a four-door family sedan about the size of today’s Honda Accord and weighing roughly 1,200 kilograms (about the weight of a fully optioned Fit), powered by either a 1.4-litre gas engine (my guess) with computer-controlled supercharging or enough compression to rate as a diesel. Performance might actually be better thanks to the 10-speed transmission and that 20 per cent weight reduction. Nothing in the report suggests great consumer sacrifice.
If that sounds just a little too rosy, contrast it with the recent news out of Europe. The U.S.’s 54.5-mpg standard, in terms of tailpipe emissions, translates into 102 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometre. Though the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) testing is not quite as stringent as ours, European automakers are expected to meet a 95-gram-perkm limit by 2021 (the current European average is around 130 g/km).
Even more Draconian is a recent call to further lower that to between 68 and 78 g/km by 2025. That translates into roughly 2.9 to 3.4 L/100 km or 71 to 81 miles per U.S. gallon.
That, my friends, is Audi, BMW and Mercedes — which rely on sales of large, heavy and powerful luxury vehicles — feeling some serious heat.
By comparison, the Big Three are as cool as cucumbers.