Fed Poised To Punish Automakers For Building Vehicles That Actually Sell

When you love Socialist Fascism, you hate the free market and any kind of commerce that provides revenue.

"Free enterprise" is an interesting concept. If we want to see examples of a totally free market of producers, in which the government does not regulate such pettiness as a manufacturer's impact on the environment, then we can see great examples in places like China and Mexico (where breathing the air has a health impact equivalent to smoking more than a pack of cigarettes a day), or India (where untreated manufacturing waste, including toxic chemicals, are dumped in the local stream, which is the only source of drinking water for millions).

Manufacturers are typically giga corporations, run by fabulously wealthy officers or billionaire families (who own the controlling shares), whose focus is making profit (more billions), and not on the well-being on the people around their manufacturing facilities, or the consumers of their products. We can see just one small example of this in the auto-industry's emissions: pass the in-lab-only test, while generating many multiples of lab-legal, and human-harmful (but perfectly legal) pollutants while operating in the real world. Human health is not a concern. Profit is.

Don't get me wrong, folks. I don't dislike profit. I love it! But if the price of my profit is at the expense of your wellbeing, *I*, personally, have a problem with that. Car manufacturers and Big Pharma (amongst others), don't.

Wow! Steve, clearly you don't understand the system. With the exception of a few, those manufacturers are owned by you via the financial funds that manage your future pension, your kids college fund, etc. That is unless you are a government employee where we taxpayers have to pay (and cannot afford) your pension. The manufacturers are in business to serve shareholders (profit), customers (products they want to buy) employees (wages, safe environment) and the community (obey the laws, pay taxes). Steering a course through those isn't easy. If you want to blast anyone go after the politicians who make the laws. Instead of mandating fuel economy they could have easily raised taxes on fuel to naturally change behavior, but the voters would have thrown them out if they did that. So the easy way political way out is to regulate the machine, and let the manufacturer take the voter/buyer wrath when people can no longer buy the vehicle they want. Face it there are a lot of environmentalist/politicians who don't think you should drive your Q5 or previous BMWs as they pollute the environment. No, you should only be allowed to drive a government sanctioned vehicle i.e. a clean Trabant. Is that what you want?

As far as the lab testing goes, what you haven't considered is that without that lab certification process the on the road pollution might be 200 times the standard set by the government. The goal of the lab test is to get the pollution level down, which it does do. As others have pointed out, the real world variables are infinite which means perfection is not possible so the lab test barrier does serve to force designs that reduce pollution levels. One gets the impression you expect perfection, a perfect "10". As the movie "10" points out to Dudley Moore there are no 10's in the real world. Just a lot of damn good 7s and 8s. That is how the testing system works.

You bought a vehicle from THE manufacturer that in the USA lied and cheated. It uses legal in Europe cheat software that is know to produce 40X pollution levels. Period. Likely there is buyers remorse. So sell it and move. Get a Tesla X. The politicians like that and many think you should be driving that. And please give the rest of us a break from beating a dead horse, the lab test.

Wow Vette71, you've really bought into the "common narrative." Thanks for helping me understand why we live in The Greatest Country In The World :-) All is well! Ignore my post.

Let's see how many patently stupid readers there are, shall we?

*Matt casts the absurd bait*

I say we build Keystone XL and give anyone who buys a Tahoe or bigger SUV an income tax rebate equal to the price of the vehicle--financing costs included of course--to reward them for showing national solidarity, but--naturally--this would not apply to non-citizens, illegals, or Muslims of any sort and that would include people we think are Muslim but who really aren't.

It takes a wise man a lifetime to realize he doesn't know much. But a fool will readily claim he knows it all.

Oh I pity the fool, Matt.

Fine seems pretty minor and with loop holes, CAFE has been mostly ineffective in moving the market. Should also require minimum standards to be licensed for public roads.