THE CAR OF THE FUTURE - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 123

going to have an impact. You don't know how fast technology is going
to move. I mean we have an idea, but we're going to know a lot more
six years from now.” One need only look at the decision in 1985, to
stop raising fuel ei ciency standards, to appreciate how tenuous such
standards really are.
And there is a second problem. Government standards don't really
mandate bet er fuel ei ciency; they merely encourage it. Companies
have always had a choice of meeting fuel economy targets or paying
penalties for falling short. In practice, U.S. automakers are loath to pay
the i nes: in fact, none of them have ever needed to, because they didn't
violate the standards. h at's not because the standards were easy to
meet. European automakers have regularly failed to meet them, and
routinely paid a price. Many observers have guessed that U.S. auto com-
panies are simply scared of being branded as rule breakers. Whether
this could change in the future, if compliance costs rise, is anyone's
guess.
Not that these are the problems that concern most skeptics and
opponents of strict fuel economy standards. Beyond a general distaste
for government meddling in the economy, and in many cases a belief
that rising oil supplies will i x whatever problems fuel economy stan-
dards are supposed to solve, they tend to focus their worries on three
areas: alternatives, safety, and cost.
Some people are open to government steps that would promote pur-
chases of more ei cient cars; they just think that fuel economy stan-
dards are the wrong way to do it. h is camp, typically concentrated in
university economics departments, would much prefer to see higher
taxes on fuel. Motorists might respond by buying more ei cient cars
or by driving less. Alternatively, they might choose to not respond at
all. Either way, studies consistently show, the same goal of cut ing fuel
consumption could be achieved at lower cost. 55 h e only problem with
this is that substantial fuel taxes have long been a political nonstarter.
For the time being, at least, they are an alternative to standards only
on paper.
Safety is another mat er entirely. For decades, improved fuel economy
has been synonymous with small cars, and there are broad worries that
smaller cars are more dangerous to drive. Technological progress has