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America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

bloomberg.com

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Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#341

Post by glial »

wand3r wrote: post #221
azinman2 wrote: post #165

For all the talk by liberatians and their ilk that regulation is bad and unnecessary, that chart of median fuel effeciency due to government requirements should give them pause. Wow. Well over a decade of non-progress until a path forward is mandated. Suddently the needle starts moving, with car owners, the environment, and energy import needs as big winners here.

The environment is an unpriced externality so it has to be controlled by the government. Also, the needle starts moving with Tesla, Volt, GM etc. Breaking into electric. The government has helped there too. I am a libertarian and I am totally ok with that. Market solutions will almost always be better than government ones BUT some things can't be solved by the market. Whether perverse incentives or unforeseen issues,…

> The environment is an unpriced externality so it has to be controlled by the government.

Yes, and a commons, and must be protected for that reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#342

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Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#343

Post by glial »

civilian wrote: post #205
old-gregg wrote: post #84

I suspect that people of the future will look back and be amazed that for more than a century we've been legally allowing our slow-reacting bodies [1] to ride around at 80mph in a 2-ton hideous mechanical equivalent of a horse, killing ourselves [2] and simultaneously destroying our cities [3]. I myself used to be a "petrolhead" my 20s and it's quite amazing to observe this awakening when looking in the mirror. I sus…

The obvious question, of course, is what you would've recommended for us to use between 1950 and 2000? Transportation and moving around fast is pretty dang valuable. It lets us do a lot of things, markets become larger, and the different number of highly specialized people I can interact with increases.

Higher population density in urban areas severely reduces the need for cars. It's possible to live in cities developed pre-car (London, Berlin, Boston, New York) without owning a car. Americans have put ourselves in a pickle by building sprawling suburbs, which then require cars to increase the "number of highly specialized people" they can interact with.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#344

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #230
azinman2 wrote: post #165

For all the talk by liberatians and their ilk that regulation is bad and unnecessary, that chart of median fuel effeciency due to government requirements should give them pause. Wow. Well over a decade of non-progress until a path forward is mandated. Suddently the needle starts moving, with car owners, the environment, and energy import needs as big winners here.

I would like to point out this is due to confusion by almost all peoples who haven't formally studied the economics of regulation. There are in fact, two types of regulation: "Safety and Soundness" and "economic." Economic regulation is almost always a bad thing and results in gross market inefficiencies like barriers to entry, cronyism, and destroys any hope of a functioning capitalist system. Think trucking regulat…

> There are in fact, two types of regulation: "Safety and Soundness" and "economic."

You're just creating terms that only mean "good regulation" and "bad regulation" and arguing that all we need is to have the good regulation but not the bad regulation. The business of separating the one from the other is the whole issue.

> Yes some business and markets may go under because of safety and soundness regulation but this is because they were not correctly accounting for the true cost of business. If they had been, it would have NEVER been profitable.

Problem: Minors are gathering in outdoor community spaces to consume alcohol.

Solution 1: Impose liability on operators of community spaces. Many community spaces can't afford the expense of constant monitoring and close down.

Solution 2: Impose liability on stores that sell alcohol to minors. A liquor store that had been doing significant business with minors goes out of business.

Both solutions mitigate the same problem but different regulations impose the cost on different people.

It's also trivial to devise regulations that will simultaneously be effective and inefficient. You can easily prevent elevator accidents by prohibiting elevators.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#345

Post by staticelf »

When I visited America, the first thing I noticed when getting out of the airport was the big ass cars everywhere. Most of the cars in my country is smaller.

Superminis are very popular here. As of now though, I drive an Chevrolet Tahoe and it's rare to meet a car as big as it is.

Why there is not much big cars here it's because there is heavy taxation on both the cars CO2 per km and on the gas itself. Gas in Sweden costs maybe 3-4 times as much as it does in the US.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#346

Post by Vinnl »

lacampbell wrote: post #211
notatoad wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pedal-powered bicycle that dusts ICE cars at stop lights. For, like, 5 metres... Not only does it take a while to get all that machinery rolling, doing it quickly kills your gas mileage. Most drivers aren't drag-racing out of the stoplights.

I have a pedal-powered bicycle that dusts ICE cars at stop lights. For, like, 5 metres... I've noticed that too. I'm no athlete, but I can often beat cars across an intersection. Another thing I've noticed is that many cyclists don't shift down before they stop. They have to get up off their seat to even start. Even people in full kit on expensive bicycles do this.

> Another thing I've noticed is that many cyclists don't shift down before they stop.

Heh, I even try not to stop at all, but to slow down a while before approaching the lights in hopes of them turning green before I reach them. Works relatively often. Unfortunately, more and more traffic lights in my town detect when there's someone waiting before changing to green, so you have to paddle all the way up to the light and then stop for a bit.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#348

Post by ljf »

theparanoid wrote: post #237
derefr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2-ton hideous mechanical equivalent of a horse This phrasing makes me curious: how did "horse-related accidents" rank among the causes of death for people who rode horses everywhere? Or people who rode in horse-drawn carriages everywhere?

Probably high. Those dealing with horses are kicked in the head not infrequently. Marie Curie's husband died after being run over by a carriage.

I'd be interested to see that. While yes people falling from a horse might be in trouble - generally horse will try to avoid danger themselves - and there would have been only so fast that you could ride a horse in a city, due to the roads available for this.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#349

Post by ljf »

rsync wrote: post #100
paganel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the occasions that I have lived in Europe, I always spoke of how interesting it was that we could just "drive to St. Petersburg" or "just drive to Transylvania" or whatever, and otherwise smart and interesting european friends would look at me like I was a crazy person. It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure. Me and my gf did a Bucharest-to-Geneva and back car-tri…

"But you're of course correct, ours was an isolated experience. I think my car was the only Romania (or Eastern-Europe)-licensed plate on the streets of Geneva (and Lausanne). If only gasoline were less expensive..." Good for you! I love to do these trips. It is so baffling how uninterested most Europeans are in just getting out and driving to parts unknown. It's tremendously rewarding.

Uninterested in doing it by car maybe, but not uninterested. Just that we have good(ish) train, plane, ferry and coach services - most people I know (I'm British) will have traveled a lot in Europe.

Also, don't forget that doing it by car is pricey for us - another comment above quoted $2.50 or something a gallon in parts of the US - here we pay about £1.20 a litre currently - so for example the cost to my brother of driving his van from the UK to northern Portugal (which he does to take his tools with him) can cost about £360 - where as he could fly and then hire a car there for a week or two for less money (if having his tools to do up his house there wasn't the reason for visiting!)

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#350

Post by taejo »

adekok wrote: post #144
rsync wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What do you get in the place for this lower efficiency? Are American cars that much heavier? More comfortable? Faster?" I cannot speak for everyone, but as someone who lives in the US and also spends a lot of time in Europe, there is a very big lifestyle difference at play here. First, I have a five person family (wife and three kids) and you[1], statistically, as a European, have 1.6 children - and as a highly educ…

> It is very, very rare to meet Europeans who drive across multiple countries for leisure Then you've never been to the south of France in the summer. It's filled with license plates from all over the EU. Mainly Dutch, UK, German. I've even seen Estonian plates. It's ~1200Km from the Netherlands to the south of France. People do it in camper vans all of the time.

Indeed. There are places in Croatia where you see more German plates than Croatian in the summer.
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