GET 35 MPG WHILE TOWING YOUR BOAT
Groups Opposing CAFE Off Track
By Bill Schneider, 9-20-07
I have to take a deep breath when I see “outdoor recreation” organizations opposing efforts by Congress to require automakers to make more fuel-efficient vehicles, including those used for towing, but that’s exactly what’s happening. At least two groups purporting to want what’s best for anglers, hunters and other outdoor recreationists say we need gas guzzlers to pull boats and RVs, and if required to make more fuel-efficient SUVs and pickup trucks, automakers will simply stop making them.
Is there anybody out there who really believes automakers will abandon one of the largest and most lucrative markets because Congress requires better gas mileage?
I recently dug through a mountain of mail received while on a fishing trip and found my September issue of Outdoors Unlimited, the official publication of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. In it, Derek Crandall, executive director of the American Recreation Coalition (ARC), a motorized recreation trade group, railed against congressional attempts to give us higher-mileage vehicles.
“Millions of Americans who enjoy the great outdoors with families and friends depend on SUVs, pickup and other light trucks to haul recreation gear, navigate rugged mountain roads and tow boats, RVs, snowmobiles, personal watercraft, horse trailers and other sporting equipment,” Crandall writes. “Many outdoor enthusiasts know these are the only vehicles that get the job done, but probably don’t know they soon may be in restricted supply and with greatly reduced capacity, and they will cost many thousands of dollars more (for less vehicle).”
Basically, what Crandall is saying echoes the message of a group called SUV Owners of America, where he serves as a board member. In a nutshell, he’s saying that it’s okay to require high mileage for vehicles not used for towing, but not our vehicles, not vehicles with the worst gas mileage.
SUVOA held a news conference at the June convention of OWAA, which I attended (one of the few writers who did, incidentally), and I posted a short article about the group’s concerns. I had doubts about the pitch then, and I have even more now.
Instead of doomsaying, I say we can do this. I understand automakers don’t want to do it and they’re threatening to not make vehicles powerful enough to tow a boat, but I for one seriously doubt the validity of these threats. Instead, I have complete confidence automakers will suck it up, if that have to, and do what needs to be done, which means making more fuel-efficient vehicles with adequate power to pull boats and RVs.
This is America. We don’t shrink from a problem; we solve it. We’ve met many challenges in our rich history, and we can do it again. If we have enough ingenuity and technology to send a people to the Moon or make a car capable of going 212 mph on a NASCAR track or a dragster that goes 336 mph, we can make a high-mileage pickup truck that can pull a fishing boat.
What is bringing this issue to the forefront is current congressional attempts to force automakers to adopt Corporate Average Fuel Standards (CAFE) requiring all vehicles under 10,000 pounds to get 35 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2020.
That sure sounds good to me. I’ve pulled my fishing boat many thousands of miles, and have a 2,000-mile trip planned for next year. In fact, my pickup truck hardly knows how to turn its wheels without a boat behind it. Besides saving me about a thousand dollars per year, the new CAFE standards would seriously reduce my guilt level for having a motor boat in the first place, knowing that I might be burning up more than my share of dwindling fossil fuel reserves and destroying some wildlife habitat along the way. If I didn’t have such an incurable fishing addiction, I’d have a vehicle that gave me 40 mpg. Even after buying the smallest possible truck able to pull my boat (Toyota Tacoma V6), I only manage 15 mpg when pulling my boat. Basically, it’s outrageous we can’t make towing vehicles that get better gas mileage.
I’ve written several times about how outdoor recreationists should make the connection between their energy consumption and disappearing wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities, and there is no better way to do it than support the CAFE standards. All of us should endorse the standards with the confidence that our auto industry can deliver us a new breed of higher-mileage towing vehicles. And our outdoor recreational life will go on, if not be improved because fewer fisheries and wildlife habitats will be destroyed by fossil fuel development.
Americans have about 11 million boats requiring a trailer and about 5 million RVs that need a towing vehicle. Add that number to millions who have horse trailers and other kinds of trailers, and you have at least 20 million people who need a vehicle to tow something. Who really thinks automakers will give up this market or price the new vehicles so high we can’t afford them?
So, in conclusion, I hope all outdoor recreationists strongly support the new CAFE standards. Call or email your senator and representative today.
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Towing requires power. At some point even gas powered must yield to diesel to get the desired result. The internal combustion engine has limitations. I don't belive there will be electric hybrids anytime soon that will have the size, power, and range.
I respect your opinion but disagree with you on several points. First Derrick Crandall's group, the American Recration Coalition is, in fact, SUPPORTING raising vehicle fuel economy standards as specified in the bipartisan Hill-Terry bill that now has a 167 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill calls for raising CAFE standards to between 32 and 35 mpg by 2022. This will give consumers 30-40% improved fuel economy without raising prices beyond reason and reducing vehicle choice. What his group and ours, SUV Owners of America are opposing is the CAFE provision already passed in the Senate that, according to a Lehman Brothers study, would require Detroit to discontinue 60% of their light trucks. The remaining tow vehicles left would cost thousands of dollars more. That's why many other groups including the American Farm Bureau Federation, The National Grange, Associated Builders and Contractors and many other recreation-related groups are in our camp.
I have been dealing with CAFE standards and vehicle related issues since I was director of public and consumer affairs at the National Highway Traffic Safety administration in the mid-1980s. I can tell you that you are absolutely right that automanufacturers can build tow vehicles that can get significantly better fuel economy - it just boils down to cost. The question is: how many of your readers would want to buy an F150 or Suburban that got 25 MPGs but the expensive technology and materials added $15,000? Even at $3.00/gallon gasoline that means one would have to drive more than 200,000 miles to break even through savings at the gas pump. Just as many hybrid owners have found that they are not really saving money when you calculate how much more they paid for the vehicle, the Senate provision is like hybrids on steroids and it would be forced upon us by Big Brother. Better to go the more reasonable route - a win-win for motorists and the environment - support HR 2927 the Hill-Terry bill. Come to our web site and we make it easy for you to send a message to your Congressman - http://www.suvoa.org. I'll leave you all with this: if Bill is right and I am wrong, then why hasn't any one of the world's profit-driven manufacturers, on their own, built a wonder tow vehicle that gets super-high mileage and made billions of dollars in profit? The answer? They did the math - not many takers when vehicles prices tip the affordability and common sense scale.
Ron DeFore
I fully realize there are details some could argue over - when is my truck a recreation vehicle vs utilitarian and do I have to switch gas - let's assume we are grown up enough to assume that problem away. Anther is the regulatory assault on personal liberty but you are free to purchase the fuel - just at a higher price.
If your goal is to decrease fuel consumption, prices provide a clear and powerful signal for personal behavior.
Also, I'm glad you touched up the "can-do" attitude. How many SUV/truck commercials have we seen with burly men in hardhats and flannel getting 'r done? The whiney little-girl screaming we hear from Detroit about fuel efficiency standards are a flaming contrast to our country's entrepreneurial spirit-- and their own ad campaigns.
Nobody "depends" on the ability to tow a big boat/trailer/RV to do their recreating. They choose to do so because it meets their desires within the level of expense they are willing to absorb.
I'd be just fine if the ability to tow for recreation meant ponying up an extra 15K for that vehicle and keeping that vehicle maintained and on the road for 200,000 miles in order to recoup the extra cost through gas-mileage savings. Besides, that's at $3.00/gallon and my guess is that we'll be seeing gas at more than that pretty soon, thus reducing the number of miles you'll need to drive to recoup that cost.
I guess I'm not all that worried about those who "need" their pickups, since I see so many of them driving around with empty beds (and tow hitches!) in town. If the supply of light trucks were greatly reduced, perhaps these folks would buy cars that met their needs 90% of the time and rent a pickup for the few times a year they actually needed it.
But this whole conversation feels to me like something that would take place in the halls of the Warm Springs State Hospital. The profligate use of oil is paying for the madrassas that produce the suicide bombers and the world-wide Islamic movement to destroy our country. It's paying for Iran to develop the atomic bomb, and to arm the Shiites who are killing our troops every day in Iraq.
Towing power? For a recreational powerboat? The free market as incentive? Delusion is a big old Barca-Lounger for the mind.
Reckon we would all have bought quadruple orders of Japanese sushi in the weeks following Pearl Harbor, knowing that the profits
would insure that Japan developed the atomic bomb before we could?
Pass the wasabi, man, and hook up the RV and the giant boat and
the trailer full of ATVs, and fill 'er up, fill 'er up, the F250 and the Blazer (that's what I own, and it's a gas-guzzlin sob) too, we're off to chase the wily walleye. Bring the fiddle, Nero, in case we can't get the Playboy channel way out there at the campground.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/opinion/13friedman.html?8hpib
Ever get spooked that we might deserve what it looks like we're going to get?
Hal
>>>>>>>
Biofuels could boost global warming, finds study
21 September 2007
Growing and burning many biofuels may actually raise rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions, a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has shown.1 The findings come in the wake of a recent OECD report, which warned nations not to rush headlong into growing energy crops because they cause food shortages and damage biodiversity.
Crutzen and colleagues have calculated that growing some of the most commonly used biofuel crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) than previously thought - wiping out any benefits from not using fossil fuels and, worse, probably contributing to global warming. The work appears in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and is currently subject to open review.
'The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuel are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto,' Keith Smith, a co-author on the paper from the University of Edinburgh, told Chemistry World. 'What we are saying is that [growing many biofuels] is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse.'
<<<<<<<<<<<<,
Don
Even if a reduction in CO2 isn't realized by the usage of biofuels, the resulting science and drive for other energy sources will eventually lead to drastic reductions in CO2.
Of course, we can just wait until the oil runs out, then whine and moan like you, right?