The American system of mandating and measuring the fuel efficiency in automobiles is called the CAFE Standard, Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency. The United States Department of Transportation defines it as, “the sales weighted average fuel economy, expressed in miles per gallon (MPG), of a manufacturer’s fleet of passenger cars or light trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 8,500 lbs. or less, manufactured for sale in the United States, for any given model year.”
The program has existed since 1975, when it was instituted in response to the first gasoline crisis in the United States and has been tweaked very seldom since then. In fact, average fuel efficiency ratings of automobiles on American roads are lower now than when the mass-production automobile was invented a century ago!
How can this be?
Some might argue that the safety factor in driving today is much higher. That is true, of course, but are we really meant to believe that humanity has the capacity of sending a probe all the way to the planet Mars to conduct in-depth soil analyses and transmit the results to Earth but cannot build automobiles which are safe but also get at least 60 miles per gallon?
Come on! Talk about a non sequitur! That simply makes no sense.
The truth is that we can build safe, fuel-efficient cars and I don’t mean hybrids. Today, people in Europe can purchase a diesel version of the Ford Fiesta, from the same family which gave us the mass-production automobile, which gets up to 60 miles per gallon with a manual transmission. 60 miles per gallon! So much for the American CAFE Standard as a leading benchmark!
Is the diesel Ford Fiesta available in North America? Not to my knowledge. Why not? I can find no rational explanation other than the fact that Ford does not want to sell it in North America.
Worse still, this is not an isolated model. My friend Ben Myatt lives in the Principality of Andorra and drives a modern, diesel Ford Fiesta which gets 60 miles per gallon. However, way back in the early 1990’s, I met a Scotsman who told me that he drove a diesel Ford Escort back home and got upwards of 80 miles per gallon with a good tailwind – back in the early 1990’s!
Something isn’t right here. Honda and Toyota are to be commended for their work on hybrid automobiles but we have had the technology for high-efficiency conventional automobiles for years and allowed Ford Motor Company to game the system, to control the market and the same United States Congress which created the CAFE Standard has sat on its hands and allowed progress on fuel efficiency to stagnate.
Shame! Shame! Shame!
So, if you are in the market for a new car and you live in North America, pop into your local Ford dealership, tell the sales manager that your friend Ben Myatt in Andorra drives a diesel Fiesta with a manual transmission and that you want one. I have a feeling that the sales manager will claim that you don’t have your facts straight. That’s OK, though, because your next step should be to visit the offices of your members of Congress to drive home the point, pun intended, that if Europe can have a 60 MPG Ford Fiesta, North America wants it, too!
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
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