The Obama administration is slapping a nearly $1,000 surcharge on the price of a new car starting in 2016.
The administration has imposed “anti-global-warming” rules that force car makers to upgrade cars and light trucks to increase average fuel economy by roughly 40 percent. The current standard of about 25 miles per gallon would have to rise to nearly 36 mpg between 2012 and 2016.
The government estimates that the rules would tack more than $400 onto the price of a new car in the 2012 model year. That would rise to almost $1,000 by 2016. But since the government has a poor track record of predicting costs, the final price increase may be much higher.
With automakers struggling and some having been bailed out with taxpayer dollars, how does the government think consumers are going to respond to an extra $1,000 on the price of a car? Will it help our economy if fewer people are going to showrooms to buy new vehicles?
The administration is trying to justify the cost by saying buyers would more than recoup their upfront costs through gas savings “over the life of the vehicle.” But most buyers of new cars do not keep their vehicles nearly that long, so for many, those savings will not cover the higher cost.
What’s more, there is a safety concern. One way automakers try to improve a vehicle’s mileage is to reduce its weight. But in a crash with a heavier car or a truck, the less a vehicle weighs, the greater the chance of serious injury or death to its occupants.
A study by the National Academy of Sciences found that in one year alone, up to 2,600 people killed in crashes would have survived had they not been in vehicles that were built lighter because of federal mileage standards.
And in 1999, a USA Today analysis of mileage standards imposed up to that point found that “in the 24 years since a landmark law to conserve fuel, big cars have shrunk to less-safe sizes and small cars have poured onto roads. As a result, 46,000 people have died in crashes they would have survived in bigger, heavier cars … .” USA Today reported that the cost “has been roughly 7,700 deaths for every mile per gallon gained.”
The financial and human costs of the latest rules are too high a price to pay to fight “global warming.”