My Dream Car

I really want to buy a Peugeot Diesel Hybrid. It gets very good mileage as a diesel. In addition it has an electric power system. It gets 60 miles per gallon when it is running on diesel. Unfortunately it is too expensive for Peugeot to meet American regulatory requirements. In fact one of these requirements is impossible to meet. The US government defines pollution as the amount of pollutants released per gallon of gas burned, not per mile traveled. So the fact that the Peugeot gets 60 miles per gallon excluding any electric part of the mileage is not factored in. 

Eric Peters has suggested this approach:

A better (because more cost-effective) solution would be to mass-market relatively simple, much-lighter-than-current-average vehicles equipped with updated versions of something like Honda’s old CVCC engine of the mid-1970s fed by a throttle body injector (TBI) teamed up with a modern six speed overdrive transmission or CVT. Such a vehicle, weighing about 1,800 lbs., let’s say, would not need more than about 100 hp (probably less)  to be powerful enough for most A to B driving, would be capable of 60-plus MPG, and – critically – would burn probably 40 percent less fuel than the typical current 270 hp V-6 (and 3,400-plus pound) sedan or crossover – which mostly never sees the high side of 80 MPH anyhow and thus is as pointless as giving a eunuch Viagra.

If such vehicles became mass-market vehicles, the result would be a massive reduction in emissions output (and fuel wastage) without the need to pursue ever-more-elaborate, ever-more-expensive technological solutions in the quest for diminishing returns, tailpipe emissions-wise. Such a machine would not need gas direct injection, or variable cam/valve timing, or multiple sequential turbochargers – just a sampling of the technology the car industry is currently deploying in order to “save fuel” and “lower exhaust emissions” in cars that are morbidly obese and thus require bigger, more consumptive engines that burn more fuel – and produce more total emissions. 

One reason we do not have better mileage cars is that the government will not let us have them. 

Another reason we cannot buy good mileage and emission cars, in this case per passenger, is that the old reliable station wagon is subject to a 25% tariff, but the minivan is not. The result is few traditional station wagons. I would have been a buyer for a station wagon over the last few years as I often have a lot of people in my car, having 6 children and 6 grandchildren. There are a few rare station wagons still made. They are placed on truck chassis and so are technically trucks in order to get by the tariff. 

We have a general lack of common sense in our government. This is similar to religious legalists who forget the purpose of the religious rites they idolize. As Eric Hoffer, longshoreman and philosopher once said: The definition of fanatic is a person who has lost sight of their goal but redoubled their efforts.