Update On CAFE Standards And Big Trucks, SUVs -- February 22, 2015

Big Pick-Up Trucks, SUVs In Texas

Remember this from yesterday's blog?

I don't know if folks have noticed -- it's hard not to notice: pick-ups are getting bigger and bigger. In Texas they are really getting big. I never understood it; with the CAFE standards I thought automobile and light truck manufacturers would have been forced out of the "big pick-up" business. It turns out that, in fact, things changed. The change must have been seen by no one except the light truck manufacturers.

BloombergBusinessweek has a huge story on why pickup trucks are getting bigger and bigger.

The fact that BBW did a story on this suggests to me that a lot of folks were caught unaware. The link to the story is here.  

The Sunday edition of The Dallas Morning News also carried the story with a slightly different angle:

Big Escalade SUVs fly off the lot at Sewell Cadillac, even though the leases cost $1,000 or more a month.

“If we can get one, it’s sold as soon as it gets here,” said Carl Sewell, chairman of Sewell Automotive Cos., which owns Cadillac dealerships in Dallas and Grapevine. “They sell faster than anything on the lot.”

Consumers began gravitating to truck-like vehicles about two years ago. SUVs, crossovers of all sizes and pickups sizzle these days and will probably lead the auto industry to double-digit sales growth this year, analysts say.

Low gas prices are fueling that fire, helping vehicles like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Honda CR-V and Ford Explorer record sales increases of 20 percent or more in January.
“People are coming in to look at sedans and going straight to the crossovers,” said Brian Huth, general manager of Five Star Ford in Plano.

The trend is pumping up automaker and dealership revenue but flattening out fuel-economy gains.

The average fuel economy of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. barely rose last year. The fleet average in 2014 was 24.1 miles per gallon, only one-tenth of a mile per gallon better than 2013. In 2013, the average rose half a mile per gallon.

If the trend toward trucks persists, it will put additional pressure on the federal government’s lofty corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards.

Much, much more at the link.

I see a lot of Sewell Cadillacs in my neighborhood. The last car I bought was a 2012 Honda Civic from Ryan Motors, Williston, North Dakota. I think I wrote about that some time ago. It was back in 2011 and, because of flooding, the only way out of Williston  was to drive (Amtrak was out of commission due to flooded tracks). The only option for me was to buy a car, and that's what I did.

I bought the car from Ryan Motors, and had it registered in San Antonio, Texas, where I was living at the time. (A long story regarding the registration.)

A day or two after buying the Honda Civic, I drove cross-country to Boston and gave it to my older daughter (another long story) where she put 50,000 miles on it in about two years. (And they say folks don't drive cars in Boston. LOL.)

The car is now in Grapevine with us and is pretty much used for cross-country driving. On open roads, at about 60 mph, I can get 49 mpg.

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Global Warming? What Global Warming?

Global warming? The Washington Post is reporting:  120-year-old record low broken in D.C., one of many today and in the past week.

We talk about record highs a lot in Washington, but the recently unfathomable was accomplished this morning. We broke a record low.

A temperature of 5 degrees was enough to smash a 120-year-old record for the date — a moment worthy of meteorological reflection.

When the city — often the warmest location in the region — is breaking record lows, you know it’s a cold one.

Much of the area saw one of the most truly frigid nights in recent memory last night, made more amazing because of how late in the season it happened. 

"How late in the season?" What are they smoking. It's the middle of February, generally the coldest month of the year where I come from.

Don notes that the temperatures would have been even colder had NOAA not "seasonally adjusted" them.