Should we lower our emission standards for cars in the U.S.?

Question

Overseas, primarily in Europe, there are 113 vehicles for sale that get a combined 40 mpg, up from 86 in 2005. Combined gas mileage is the average of a vehicle’s city and highway mpg numbers.

They are unavailable to American consumers even though made by U.S.-based automobile manufacturers or by foreign manufacturers with substantial U.S. sales operations, such as Nissan and Toyota.

Many in Europe even get ovr 60MPG, but are not allowed in the U.S. because of emission standards. This doesn't seem to make sense if CO2 is the primary source of Global Warming. These cars are much cheaper than Hybrids, and get much better mileage. With these cars we can cut our oil usage by half, save money, and help save the environment.

Answer 1

It is a trade off, do you want the proven consequences of smog, ground level ozone, acid rain, and particulates or possible global warming? It isn't like the EPA made those more stringent emissions standards for the heck of it.

Answer 2

There are several reasons why we cant get those cars here.

- Low demand for subcompact (Honda Fit, Chevy Aveo, Toyota Yaris) and micro cars (Smart) except when gas prices rise suddenly.  If it went back to $2.50-3/gal people would be trading them in as fast as they are trading SUV's right now.

- Americans/Australians like large comfortable cars that are built for cruising our large spread out countries.  Europeans/Asians like small cars for their small crowded countries.

- Places like Cali have come up with even more unrealistic emissions laws than the US which may force automakers to make special cars just for them (at higher costs) or just stop selling cars there.

- Europe focuses on reducing CO2 (uneducated hippies think its a pollutant and don't realize that without it all life would end) & O3 (smog) which is produced in higher amounts by gas engines than diesel engines.  The US focuses on reducing NOx which causes acid rain (big problem in Europe) and is produced by diesel engines.

Answer 3

thats doesn't make sense, should emission standards help the environment? ahhh, irony. if your statistics are correct then I would consider lowering them.

Answer 4

Water vapor is the highest concentration of greenhouse gas, not CO2, so your premise is faulty.

Answer 5

There's no such thing as global warming. Al Gore has it all wrong, and he is causing a mass panic. The planet goes through cycles where volcanic activity and "El Nino" and "La Nina" work together or agains each other and affect the atmosphere's "climate." CO2 doesn't create "global warming" it creates the "greenhouse effect" which maintains our planet at a livable temperature. Without it, the mean temperature would be 5 degrees. Also, plants use CO2 for photosythesis, which produces oxygen for us to breathe, and removes CO2 from the atmosphere. It's all a natural balance. The amonut of CO2 we have put into the atmosphere since the inception of the internal combustion engine is .001%. To make an analogy, if the atmosphere is a 100 story building, our "pollution" is the thickness of the linolium floor on the 1st story. That's nothing, which has caused no effect to the atmosphere or its temperature. So I don't think we need any type of emission standards, and I don't understand how people in california can live. My vehicle gets 12 MPG, and I'm proud.

Answer 6

There is no need to lower our emission standards to get those cars here. When demand for higher mileage cars gets strong enough the automakers will build U.S. compliant versions of those cars. The technology to do that is already available but the automakers make bigger profits by selling larger cars.

Answer 7

Good luck with EPA.

Over their dead bodies.

Interesting though.

Does "more MPG" and more emissions, offset emissions with "less MPG"?

Sounds reasonable.

Answer 8

This is what your friendly environmentalist has done for u. They have retarded the ignition time from 14 deg top dead center to 19. That was to reduce the NO2 . Rain washes the NO2 out as it is a fertilizer. It is not ozone as reported by the weather man.Ozone is very high and is O3 and very deadly for people.  This reduced the efficiency and gave us less mpg. It also increased the CO which is very bad. We have too many writing specs and not considering what else it affects. CO2 is not the problem as the plants have taken care of that.

Answer 9

There's no point in having better mileage if your cities are full of smog.  No.  Bad idea.

Answer 10

Regardless of the area the emission standards should be lowered everywhere. Andy is right, we do need CO2 to live, however, the amount that we have right now is crazy because of industries, vehicle emissions, pollution and the list goes on. If these cars will help the environment, then use them. Sell them in your area, obviously the U.S. Manufacturers dont care. Congrats to you for wanting to help the environment, good luck.