Check out Teddy Field's homepage article about the new CAFE standards. MB's against them. And apparently so is Teddy! What do you think?

 

Yes, they are a little too extreme.

 

obsurd....

 

They are going to need to reduce the price of the E-Cell SLS so I can buy one. There is no way I am going to buy a "Smart" car.

Maybe an F1 KERS in the AMGs.

 

Can we please get government out of the way of business?! If companies have to pay huge fines to the Goverment, how do you think that effects there ability to hire more employees?

 

I completely agree with Mercedes' frustration We all know what's happening though. Protectionism...that's all it is...why are we *still* unable to get wonderful cars that get almost 50mpg like the CLS350 CDI here? US car and OIL company lobbyists are looking out for their best interests by way of the US government. That goal of 54.5mpg is unrealistic with petrol engines. Everyone knows that, in order to achieve high mpg, you need to have a more efficient engine., i.e. DIESEL.

Low-tech US companies didn't want to spend the R&D to develop better engines, nor did OIL companies want the consumer to have access to *real* fuel-sipping vehicles, not a ridiculous hybrid that you have to 'nanny' around town to achieve the same mpg. Europeans are already enjoying those types of mpg figures with diesels. It's the average US consumer that is CLUELESS and still think that DIESEL is loud and stinky.

 

Bottom line is the anti car Jihadist keep pushing for smog and CAFE regulations in hopes of killing off the private ownership of vehicles and getting us all stuck on mass transit. Their first salvo of regulations in the early 70's left us with underpowered and unrealiable gas guzzlers (excluding the Japanese) like a 5.6 MBZ barely making 227hp. However the rule of unintended consequences came into play. The industry battled back with the massive use of micro processors and now we have the safest and fasted production cars ever built (easily eclipsing the previous golden age of muscle cars) that get decent milage when driven judicially and meet all the very stringent smog regulations. The anti car Jihadist are appalled at this success so once again they will pass more regulations in hopes of killing off the car. We may be living in the last golden age of high performance vehicles, but if they ever perfect the flux capacitor, the auto industy will have the last laugh.

 

Manufacturers will build what consumers want. The government should not be mandating fuel efficiency standards.

 

What do you expect from someone who never had a real job and owns an Escape?

 

Damn the bigges bs he will do after his bs plan for american economy... Watch another recesion after american economy still havent pick it self up frome thevprevious one??? Did this guy even finish high school!!! More diesels please...

 

The United States government, under this administration, has become amazingly oppressive and ridiculous - coming from an individual who has one parent from a borderline communist nation. The unreal expectations, the promises that never went fulfilled, and now this. CAFE is aimed at the general good of fuel savings and reduced emissions, but don't you think $200,000,000 is a little extreme to take from a foreign company that has major interests and a market here in the United States? There should be special exemptions for the high-end luxury market justified by the reputation of the company as well as other cost factors/market sectors. People buy Mercedes-Benz because they desire a classy car that sports luxury, performance, and the best in German engineering, and do not want to deal with the very thought of losing the prevalence of the Mercedes on the market or other negative consequences. If the fines were lower this is money they can easily invest in creating more efficient vehicles on top of the almost $2 million dollars a day they spend in research and development. Won't the benefit of job creation NOT in the temporary construction area (a secondary sector activity, Obama, Putting America to Work is a joke in a country built on tertiary activities) outweigh the costs of increased fuel use in luxury brands? Mercedes takes skilled labor in a majority of its company and therefore is considered to be the type of job that America is built on and still adding to.

FACT: Mercedes engines are built with such precision and technology that US cars cannot match and probably get better fuel economy in comparable configurations anyways. Why don't you impose these restrictions for the companies BASED in the US that were BAILED OUT by the US GOVERNMENT in the first place? Leave the big German 3 out of it and everyone will be happy. CDI and BlueTec FTW as well, why not take that into consideration, Obama? Diesel has more energy per equivalent unit that Petrol and if efficiency is what you are after why don't you stop unnecessarily inflating the price of originally cheaper diesel (they keep it more expensive, look into it if you don't believe me) and follow Europe's example? I know this is not all on the shoulders of the US government but many economic patterns and elements in their control have lead to this. Mercedes has the cleanest diesel out there, look at Daimler AG's Detroit Diesel and thank them.

This is like being in the management sector of a large company and you tell your employees to design an impossible product for impossibly low costs. It simply can't be done when it isn't the real intention of the company in the first place. We want to drive these vehicles and obviously since we have the means to buy them do not care about fuel consumption as much as the GM owner. Petrol is the only way to go and none of this cheap electric car facade. The US doesn't need the government to tell us what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot drive, and mandate an impossible in an economy supported by these corporations. It is total BS and I am with you, Mercedes, 100%. Volkswagen AG and MBUSA, LLC need to continue to oppose this.

 

Oppose oppose oppose!!!

 

Ah, mon ami, it is the eternal see-saw that started in the sixties and has yet to resolve the true goal and reach of the economy and polution of vehicles. The double face of the problem is the non signature on the Kyoto Protocol. So, let the games proceed...

On the other side of the coin, I'm glad I purchased the C350 on time.

 

It's BS, and I hope MB and VW continue to fight it.

Also, doesn't an increase to CAFE have to go through Congress, or can the President (or the "administration" as the articles say) just set it at what he wants?

Is Obama driving a 50+ mpg vehicle himself? What about his official vehicles? I'm sure they're big, heavy SUVs and limos that get 10 mpg at best. "I'm sorry Mr. President, we're going to have to remove the bullet-proofing from your vehicles to save weight and get better mileage".......

 

I guess I have to be the dissenting voice here — I fully support the increased standards.

The auto industry has had a free ride since the '80s. The CAFE standard in 1978 was 18 MPG; in 2010 it was 27.5 MPG. But that change did not happen equally over those 32 years; the number plateaued in 1990 and has sat at 27.5 since.

If the first 12 years' rate of change had continued for the past 20 years instead of sitting flat, our current CAFE standard would be over 43 MPG.

The US has some of the worst CAFE standards in the industrialized world. MB's home base in the EU has current standards of 45 MPG! For them to cry foul about the US future standards that are barely 20% more than what they currently must meet on their own home turf is disingenuous.

They would go a long way to meeting the new standards today simply by importing the A and B class cars to the US. The current A class gets a combined Hwy/City of over 52 MPG! Where will this car be in 15 years if it's already knocking on the door of the future US standard?

REF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFE_standards
http://www.mercedes-benz.de/content/...ta/models.html

 

There's so much wrong with this, I don't even know where to begin. Why not 60 MPG? Why not 75? And while we're waving our magic wands, why not $50/hour minimum wage so that everyone makes at least $100,000 a year? All problems solved by the stroke of a pen! Let the engineers and the employers figure out the messy details on how this is supposed to work in reality.

A good article today about some of the OTHER costs involved with these decrees from on high. So, feel free to dissent--then put YOUR kids into these aluminum foil scooters and send them hurtling down the highway at 70MPH.


The High Cost of Low Fuel Bills
New efficiency standards for cars may cost lives

John Stossel | August 11, 2011

President Obama has declared that auto companies' fleets must average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, almost double the current 27.5. Standing at his side when he made the announcement were executives from the Big Three automakers.

The New York Times reported: "It is an extraordinary shift in the relationship between the companies and Washington. But a lot has happened in the last four years, notably the $80 billion federal bailout of General Motors, Chrysler and scores of their suppliers, which removed any itch for a politically charged battle from the carmakers."

Right. They're happy to agree to stupid rules, since they are now dependent on government favors. Obama said that under his new rule, "everyone wins. Consumers pay less for fuel, the economy as a whole runs more efficiently."

Sounds impressive, but he didn't mention the costs. The Center for Automotive Research says the new standard will raise the price of cars by about $7,000. You'd need to save a lot on fuel to break even.

But that's not the worst of it. The new rules will kill people. Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explained this on my Fox Business show last week. The MPG standard "has been killing people for the last 30 years," Kazman said. How can that be?

"It forces cars to be...made smaller and lighter....They are simply worse in just about every type of auto collision." The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration actually backs Kazman up. It estimates that smaller cars are responsible for an additional 2,000 deaths each year.

Imagine that—a government safety agency promotes a rule that kills people.

"Think about the minute risks that agencies like Environmental Protection Agency go into a tizzy about....If any private product had a death toll one fraction of what the miles-per-gallon rules cost, that product would have been yanked off the market years ago."

Do we at least end up using less gasoline and saving money? No, given the increased upfront cost of the car. "It is not clear that it saves people money," Kazman said. "If these technologies in fact save people money, you don't need a government law to force them down people's throats."
Right. We're not stupid.

Bob Deans of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of America's biggest environmental groups, came on my show to say that Kazman and I are wrong. "Cars like the Chevy Cruise—42 miles per gallon—get top marks on safety. The Ford Focus, more than 40 miles per gallon—top marks in safety. We're getting safer cars, and they're not coming at the expense of fuel efficiency."

Deans added: "By increasing that gas mileage for our auto fleet, we can cut our oil consumption in this country by 4 million barrels per day by 2030. That would almost wipe out our OPEC purchases daily. It will make our country stronger."

But we use oil for lots of things. If we cut gasoline use by a third, unlikely as that would be, we'd still only reduce our fossil fuel use by 7 percent. That does not make much difference for $7,000 a car and 2,000 extra deaths each year.

"It's not necessarily a smaller car that we're talking about," Deans replied. "You look at Chevy Malibu. That is a 3,400-pound car. It's not a small car. It's getting 33-miles to the gallon. We believe Detroit can do this."

Maybe they can. Maybe they can't. If they could, I'd think they would do it to meet consumer demand. They'd do it without government forcing it on us.

"New technologies can make cars safer," Kazman acknowledged. "The point is, if you put the technologies in a large, heavier car, that car will be safer still....None of the proponents of these standards would acknowledge (the lives lost). It's always win-win, and that is nonsense."

Life involves tradeoffs. If we want to minimize deaths from auto accidents, we may use more fuel than we might otherwise use. Who should make that decision, the government? Or you and I? In the land of the supposedly free, that really should not be a tough question.

John Stossel is host of Stossel on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of Give Me a Break and of Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.

COPYRIGHT 2011 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS, INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

 

Finally a strong dose of reality.

 

We have to get back on track somehow. Catching up with today's European standards +20% with a target implementation date of 15 years in the future is a reasonable start. Why should the US be behind European technology in this area, too? We should be pushing the state of the art, not being a stick in the mud, holding the world back, when we know that fossil fuels are a finite resource.

Red herring and slippery slope argument. Please polish your logic and argumentative skills.

I carry them in my C230 Sport Coupe, thank you very much. My son has a Ford Focus ZX3, my daughter a Toyota Prius, and my girlfriend an Opel/Saturn Astra. We've already dissented with our reasonably sized 30+MPG vehicles.

If you want to turn this conversation about fuel economy into one of safety, then feel free to start a different thread. Scare tactics of big SUVs running over reasonably sized cars won't hold much sway with me, though.

 

Your C230 Coupe is a 30+MPG vehicle? LOL!

(Had a lot more on the response here, but decided against it. Waste of time.)

 

What? No Nissan Leaf.

 

No new thread needed. Fuel economy and safety are inextricably linked by something called "reality" which is governed by the laws of physics, not the laws of the 112th Congress. Pretending they are unrelated won't change the fact that they are.

This is a classic example of the hidden consequences behind many of these seemingly "well intentioned" laws--dead people don't complain about the laws that killed them.

 

Yup. Laugh it up, fuzzball.

 

And I remember back in the 70s when all the nay-sayers like you guys quoted "experts" who said that to meet all the safety regs, cars would weigh 10,000 pounds.

Please, tell me, what is wrong with getting better gas mileage? Why are you folks so afraid of it? What's wrong with progress? Why do you want to hold us back?

Luddites.

 

Finally the US is waking up to the inevitable.

My 11 year old merc E320CDi: 197hp, 0-60 in 8 secs yet I get 45mpg (imp gallons), so that's 36mpg US gallons.. sure it's poor around town, but I didn't buy it to sit at traffic lights.

With the latest C250CDi: ~200hp, 0-60 in <8 secs, extra urban fuel economy is ~70mpg (~60mpg US)... yet it's a bigger car than mine.

Add a bit of hybridness to a decent diesel and the urban cycle can exceed the extra urban, look at the upcomming volvo V60 PHEV and you're looking at 125mpg(~100mpg US) average.. and that V60 is no tin toy, so safety isn't going to be an issue. Even just a mild hybrid (electrical power for the car generated through braking) boosts things a long way.

For many years auto manufacturers have got away with very inefficient vehicles because they could. For instance, take something as simple as an oil pump. Current standard is that it is driven off the crank shaft and excess pressure is relieved through a simple valve, so setting a fixed pressure. This is stone age technology and very inefficient. By going to an electric pump and pressure sensor the pump can be made to only pump just enough to maintain pressure so eliminating pumping losses associated with pushing gallons of oil past the old pressure relief valve. Do this kind of thing on every single pump/motor/valve throughout the car and suddenly it's substantially more efficient, and that's before you go hybrid/hydrogen/electric.. it could have been done 20 years ago, but there is a small cost and the automakers needed minimum sale prices so they built cheap but inefficient, and they got away with it because buyers didn't view fuel economy highly enough to only buy the most efficient vehicles. With pressure they will build cheap and efficient as they put the effort into research... much of the technology is here, with a little more effort it will be cheap too.

 

I figured you were getting your stats from your dashboard. You actually believe what the instrument cluster is telling you by running a formula based on speed, distance, and data from a 8-9 year old fuel gauge in a 8-9 year old fuel tank?

You should contact MB and have them study your amazing car, which is getting a whopping 8+MPG more than every other 2003 C230K! Amazing. Hold on to that car man, it's a one of a kind.


2003 C230K Stats (gov)


Edmunds


MPG Facts.Com

But your instrument cluster is, I'm sure, correct.