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More and more I'm beginning to understand how Alice felt when she fell down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. We are now living in a world in which political science trumps engineering science. Don’t even think about applying engineering economics principles. In this brave new world, the consequences of big business being in bed with big government are becoming readily apparent. Nothing illustrates this better than the Obama administration decree – using linear thinking in a non-linear world – that car manufacturers achieve a 56.5 mile per gallon average efficiency standard by the year 2015. The current standard is 35.5 mpg.
In the Wall Street Journal article "Over Caffeinated CAFÉ" by Holman Jenkins (July 6, 2011), Mr. Jenkins correctly points out "engineering is absent." No consideration is given to the state of the technology or our ability to deliver this mandated efficiency goal. Sean McAlinden of the Center for Automotive Research reports that to meet the stated goal the demand for materials needed to produce ultra high-mileage cars will exceed the supply by several times over. This is in a world where the latest Honda Civic is 42% heavier than its 1990 model and has nearly twice the horse power. The consequences of this mandate will be the production of cars Americans do not want at a price they cannot afford. What is the auto industry’s response to this? They have asked that the timeframe for achieving this goal be extended so that they have time to lobby for its repeal under a new administration. They do not want to directly confront Obama on this issue because they do not want to bite the hand that bailed them out.
So just like the electric utility industry, where over the past 10 years the number of electronic devices owned by each American has gone up by a factor of four to five, but the administration wants to replace high-energy density conventional electricity production with low-energy density solar and windmill production, at three to four times the cost of these conventional sources, the Obama administration wishes to raise fuel efficiency goals without any consideration of technical or economic feasibility.
Just like Alice in Wonderland – where up is down and down is up – the Obama administration will not allow engineering reality to stand in the way of political goals. The overarching natural principle of government is at work – the law of unintended consequences. Taking every gasoline powered vehicle off the road and replacing them with electric vehicles will substitute the carbon dioxide they otherwise would have produced with carbon dioxide that is generated by fossil fuel coal plants to produce the electricity they will require. In the process, as Obama has correctly stated, “prices … will skyrocket.” Does this sound like a good use of precious investment capital to you?
