Wrong,
DOOMMaster. First of all, despite the claims of onerous US safety regulations, most of nations merely copy US safety regs, rather than coming up with their own. A few nations, like Canada and Sweden, have
more stringent safety regulations. So if foreign car makers can not only meet those safety regulations, but also meet tougher fuel economy standards, there's no reason for American car makers (who have to build such cars for the European and Asian markets
anyway) to not be able to do it.
As for the "law" of supply and demand, that only works when people realize there's a demand and have the means to meet those demands. Most people don't have the billion or so needed to start up a car company. The fact that hybrids are selling for
over MSRP (and have been since they were introduced) should be enough indication that there's
ample demand for a fuel efficient vehicle.
Also, I did
not say that a classic car with a modern engine would have anything like an amazing improvement in fuel economy. I said "better" which means
any improvement. Sure, they weren't designed with aerodynamics in mind (though, cars like the Chrysler Airflow certainly were), but they'll still see
some gains.
Electronics are different from engines, but let's not forget that we're now getting 60 HP out of 4-cylinders when at one point in time you needed a V-8 to get that much horsepower. Not to mention that modern engines of all sizes, are vastly better than the older engines, not only in terms of performance, but also quality and reliability. Modern electronics make that happen in a number of ways. One of which is the sophisticated fuel management systems currently in use, another, and one that is only just starting to come into use in automotive design, is the power of computers to simulate everything, without the need to build a working prototype to see if the design will work.
Car makers simply haven't been
focused on fuel economy like they should be. They've been thinking in terms of how much junk they can stuff in a car, without worrying if there's a better way to do it. Have you ever been part of an automotive survey? I've been through a number of them, and all but one of them asked if you wanted a very limited choice of features. You had
no option of saying, "I'd really like to see this feature that you don't have listed here on a new car." on all but one of them.
None of them asked about fuel economy.
None. Kind of hard for a car maker to get feedback on how someone feels about fuel economy if they don't give you the choice, isn't it?
But, hey, if you want to keep swallowing the corporate line that they "can't do anything" go right ahead. I've posted a number of links in this thread showing that it
is possible to improve fuel economy, without cramming someone into a microcar or compromising safety. There's other things that they could do besides the ones that I've mentioned, but they're considered "too hard." For example, one of the things Tucker did with his rear mounted engine was make sure that air exhausted through the radiator filled the low-pressure area behind the car to help reduce drag. Of course, to do this, car makers would have to completely rethink their designs as getting the weight balance right with a rear mounted engine can be a bit tricky.
In the early
1980s,
Chrysler was all set to go into production of a turbine car, but it was killed as part of the bail out because the government considered it "too risky."Nice thing about turbines is that they're pretty flexible when it comes to fuel types, so had they gone into production and been successful, there might not be some of the issues about switching to alternative fuels that we have now. (And, heck, I'd be willing to bet that an MPG exemption could be easily made for an alternatively fueled vehicle that was low polluting and had a cheap source of fuel.)
Speaking of alternative fuels,
at least one industry consultant feels car makers are dragging their feet.Car maker complaints are all a dog and pony show so they don't have to actually think about what it is they're doing. Certainly, they'll never be able to produce something the size and weight of an SUV that gets 100 MPG, but they
don't have to! All they have to do is produce enough vehicles that get high enough mileage that the
fleet average meets CAFE standards. So, if they offer two really high mileage cars for every gas guzzler, they're in compliance. Wish I could have the same lattitude in my work (where the vast majority of stuff I produce
has to meet specs or else I'm out of a job).