Do Oil Companies Have Financial Interest In Auto Makers And/Or Vice Versa?......

[global1]

It seems to me that auto makers would benefit greatly if they made cars that were more fuel efficient. However, is seems that the auto makers always balk at Congress when the issue of raising the CAFE standards comes up. I'm always puzzled as to why? Isn't it beneficial for an auto maker to have cars that provide the most miles per gallon?

I sometimes hear that it is a cost issue to design cars that are more fuel efficient. That they could make a car fuel efficient but it would be out of the reach for the consumer's pocket book and sales would suffer.

I don't know if I believe that in this 21st century of all sorts of technological advances.

Then I sit back and think - who does it benefit - if our cars are not fuel efficient. Lo and behold - we come up with - THE OIL COMPANIES.

So hence the question - do oil companies hold financial interest in the auto makers? Are they really the ones fighting 'fuel efficiency in our cars?

I keep hearing stories of all sorts of inventions that could provide more fuel efficiency - and that they are being bought up and shelved by the oil companies.

If oil companies hold interest in auto makers - this should stop and the converse is true as well - if auto makers hold financial interest in oil companies - this too should stop.

[tridim]

1. The oil companies are against anything that lowers demand for oil. Period. nt

[KT2000]

2. after watching the movie

Who Killed the Electric Car - it could not be more plain.
If you have not seen it - please do.
The power lock the oil companies have on us must be broken if we are to survive.
The form allegiances wherever they need, to keep control.

[Merlot]

12. Yes, Who Killed the electric Car is great

and answers a lot of questions.

See it!

[bluerum]

3. In order to improve gas mileage and reduce emissions a substantial investment

in re-engineering and design would be needed. Then they would have to retool factories and find suppliers etc. It is not simple task and I can understand the resistance to the engineering challenges.

Of course, there is also the reason that you site. Oil industry investments in the auto industry.

What is needed, is the political backbone to help fund the research, offer incentives, and enforce regulations. Right now, the politicians are in the pocket of the oil and automotive industries and they don't want to rock the boat.

So global, it is up to us, the American people, to force the government to act on our will.

[global1]

7. Don't They Re-engineer And Design And Retool On A Regular Basis?.......

We're always seeing new models coming out that are re-engineered, designed and retooled. I can't buy this as an excuse. They re-engineering, design and retooling they are doing makes the car look different. Take that same money and make the car perform different instead. The auto maker that does this will benefit by increased sales.

Again - I believe that the technology is there for them to do whatever they want to the auto. They just don't want to do it.

We were able to land a man on the moon - but we can't make a fuel efficient car cheaply. I don't believe that.

[bluerum]

21. You would be surprised how many parts are the same from year to year.

But you are right - we can engineer anything when the will and financing is there. But it is not.

In order to develop efficient low emissions internal combustion engines we would need a serious rethinking of the technology. This is much different than re-designing exterior bodies, creating new and different colors of paint, finding new upholstery materials etc. and the smaller technology innovations seen in the year to year design cycle.

We are talking about making engines from ceramics to reduce weight, adding battery power for hybrids, reducing weight as much as possible and making engines more efficient at converting energy to motion. This is a simplistic analysis though. The engineering issues are extremely complex but again it is not impossible. We need the will and the resources.

[conscious evolution]

9. How hard is it to redeisgn a transmission?

Change the gear ratios and -bingo-instant increase in mpg.

[gravity]

11. They already do that for the most part

the next step is a CVT transmission which is a completely different piece of technology.

[papau]

13. The Clinton Gore car in 2000 got 70 mpg using off the shelf components - its not design

cost that is the problem - they want to sell the more profitable trucks - and trucks at 15 mpg vs 22 for cars is no big deal, but vs 50 mpg cars those truck sales die.

They have to be forced to do the right thing - or allowed to die with new Toyota plants replacing big 3 plants and big 3 jobs.

[gravity]

14. Is there a working prototype for the Clinton Gore car?

If it a profitable car, then any sane company would produce it or something similar

[papau]

23. The program was discountinued by Bush in 2001 - the 1500 million paid to the auto

industry to produce the car - and there was a prototype - appears to have been wasted - as they did not even present it at an auto show as a concept car.

http://media.www.studlife.com/media/storage/paper337/news/2002/01/11/News/Bush-Abandoning.HighMileage.Car.Program.For.Hydrogen.FuelCell-.shtml

Bush abandoning high-mileage car program for hydrogen fuel-cell
H. Josef Hebert (AP)
Issue date: 1/11/02
WASHINGTON (AP) – After nearly $1.5 billion in subsidies, the Bush administration is ending an eight-year program to help automakers develop high-mileage, family size cars. Instead, it wants to spur the growth of hydrogen fuel cells to power the next generation of motor vehicles.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, addressing an auto show in Detroit, planned Wednesday to tout hydrogen fuel cell development as part of a broader strategy to reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil and help the environment by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and other tailpipe pollution.
Department officials said Abraham would be joined by auto executives in unveiling the new program, called "Freedom Car." It is expected to emerge as the Bush administration's response to critics who are calling for a phase-out of gas-guzzling cars and sport utility vehicles.
Automobile fuel economy is likely to be a major issue when the Senate takes up energy legislation next month. Democrats are calling for the government to require increased auto fuel efficiency, especially as it applies to the popular SUVs.
The Energy Department and senior White House policy officials in the Bush administration all along have expressed little enthusiasm for the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, an ambitious government-industry effort aimed at quadrupling automobile fuel economy by the middle of this decade.
The department said the new fuel cell program would supersede the new-generation vehicle partnership, which had pushed industry development of hybrid gasoline-electric cars now just entering the market. The old program had focused industry attention on finding ways to improve fuel economy without reducing car size and zip.
Begun in 1993 and championed by the Clinton administration—especially Vice President Al Gore—the joint venture between the federal government and the Big Three domestic automakers was seen as a way to put family-size sedans that get 80 miles per gallon into showrooms by 2004.

Using advanced aerodynamics, new engine technologies and lighter composite materials, the automakers in the program developed prototypes of vehicles capable of getting more than 70 mpg, three times better fuel economy than most cars now on the road. But commercial development of large numbers of these cars in the next few years, as once envisioned, was not expected.
Although Abraham supported the program as a senator from Michigan, shortly after he became energy secretary he said the highly touted program had outlived its usefulness because the auto industry was going in a different direction.
The administration proposed slashing funding for the program as part of its first budget a year ago. Nevertheless, Congress continued to keep it alive, even as some environmental groups and the watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense called the program an unnecessary subsidy for the car industry.
Instead, the administration intends to focus on speeding up development of hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicles, a technology that has attracted intense interest in recent years.
This new government-industry partnership "will further the president's national energy policy, which calls for increased research in hydrogen technology to diversify and enhance America's energy security," the Energy Department said.
It is hoped that the new federal push for development of fuel cells will spur industry efforts to develop motor vehicle engine and power systems that eventually will replace the internal combustion engine.
Although several automakers, including DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General Motors, have said they expect to have fuel-cell vehicles in showrooms within the next four or five years, wide availability of such cars is probably a decade or more away.
A fuel cell produces energy from a chemical reaction when hydrogen is combined with oxygen. The only byproduct is water. In recent years, the cost of fuel cells has dropped sharply. Hydrogen can be produced from natural gas aboard vehicles or pure hydrogen can be used, requiring development of a new supply infrastructure.

[bluerum]

22. And tremendous loss of power. eom

[gravity]

4. Well oil companies do to automakers, but automakers financial interest rely on consumer demand

Auto companies just want to give consumers what they want, so they can make a profit.

For the CAFE standards, if the companies don't think people want the more efficient cars, then they would be against it. If consumers do want the more efficient cars at the price they are selling for, we wouldn't even need the CAFE standards to begin with.

Really American auto companies want the price of gas to remain low, since they produce more profits selling SUVs compared to economy cars. Their interest are different than those of the oil companies.

[Merlot]

18. People wanted the electric car

and after giving us one, they took them away and smashed them.

American auto companies had the technology to build electric cars first in the 90's. They didn't act on this technology, and the Japaneses (Honda/Toyota) used this knowledge base to make the hybrids. See Who Killed the Electric Car.

The auto companies keep telling us what we want.

[gravity]

19. Well that would be a profit opportunity waiting to be exploited

by the auto companies

[wuushew]

5. I think ways could be found to offset the initial costs of hybrids

Gore in his congressional testimony suggested that high efficiency construction materials could be encouraged by setting up a separate financing mechanism that would negate the initial costs of building more efficient homes.

Why not do this with cars? A third party could loan money to the buyer and the loan could be amortized and paid for by the savings in fuel over the life of the car/loan.

[IDemo]

6. The 50+ mpg car is 15 years away

in the past -> http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/9765.shtml

[Strelnikov_]

10. Jesus I would like to get my hands on one of those w/ a cherry body

so I could rip out the ICE and convert to an EV.

[IDemo]

20. I'd love to do an EV conversion too, given the garage space and money

I probably wouldn't choose a vehicle with already the highest mpg figures for a regular ICE production car, though. Maybe a mini truck for me..

[Clark2008]

15. Why do they always have to be so tiny and Pinto/Civic-like?

Look, I'm a small woman, but, after my mid-sized sports car took a huge hit by a semi on the interstate back in 1997 and I survived with minimal damage (to myself - the car was totaled, but protected me), I wouldn't be caught dead - literally - driving anything smaller on the roads around here. Interstates 40 and 75 meet in my city and the entire city is designed around the interstates (it's very difficult to get from one place to another around here without hoping on the interstate). Commuters here must battle large trucks from sun-up to sun-down in order to toodle around town. I would be petrified in anything smaller than my Mustang or my husband's Beemer - neither of which are HUGE, mind you, but neither are Ford Focus/Honda Civic small, either.

Can't we have 70 mpg sports cars, mid-sized cars, etc. that don't look like cheese wedges and bubbles? Besides, it would seem to me that a sports car design would be more aero-dynamic to begin with.

Just wondering.

[gravity]

16. Physics

If you have a smaller and lighter car, then it requires less energy to move it.

It's a far greater challenge to make a bigger car have the same fuel requirements and we are already reaching the limits of the efficiency of combustion engines.

[Merlot]

17. Cool site.

[IChing]

8. YES.......They fueled and helped developed Hitler's war machine

Standard Oil (Exxon) and General Motors.



Hitler's Carmaker: The Inside Story of How General Motors Helped Mobilize the Third Reich (Part 1)
http://hnn.us/articles/37935.html


Hitler's Carmaker: As the Nazis Amassed Power, What Did GM Know and When? (Part 2)
http://hnn.us/articles/38255.html


Hitler's Carmaker: From War Profiteering to Undermining Mass Transit (Part 3)
http://hnn.us/articles/38526.html

Hitler's Carmaker: How Will Posterity Remember General Motors' Conduct? (Part 4)
http://hnn.us/articles/38829.html

[blues90]

24. With my 33 years working with ford dealerships I'll tell you what .

I have worked on the cars and I have worked with customers and engineers later on .

The main problem is they stiil use the same old internal combustion engine , only difference is they have added tons of electronic controls to monitor fuel burn and adjust the mixture to air .

People still have the idea that pushing down on the gas pedal gives more fuel , in a way it does but it really only opens up a throttel to allow in more air , the rest is all done by electronic controls , ie , processors which are computers with inputs such as air temp, desity , flow , load , engine temp and so on , then the computer takes these inputs and then outputs signals to controls , ie , timing , time and amount of fuel injected and so on .

But the basic internal combustion engine has changed little other than more valves per cylinder or overhead camshafts which basically involve less moving parts to reduce friction and they use plastic and aluminum engine parts to reduce weight , all effect economy .

Still they are inefficient and have a catalitic converter to reduce CO before it leaves the tailpipe and some have forms of recycling unburnt fuel but this is minimal .

Also they use cheap parts which are the sole reason for recalls and malfuctions , they could have done a much better job . I saw alot of lousy engineering to save a dollar here and there , the result , needless trips to the dealer for avoidable repairs .

Also to point out , it cost ford $7,000 to produce one ford explorer out the factory door and sell for $30,000 hence the extended warrenty , it's a trade off but the manufacturer stills wins big .

So the short answer is the cost to retool for electric cars and the big three do subscribe to the Carlyle group and so do the big oil corps as well as many others .

There has been a hand in hand deal with the auto manufacturers and big oil since the birth of the internal combustion engine . Think of plastics too .

Realize the auto corps have been screwing the public for a good long time and it has gotten worse , during the 60's and even 70's your cars or trucks did not just fall apart , they had a 12,000 mile 12 month warrenty and it was rare to use it much at all .

I have seen how these cars are built and it is truely a sick joke and I feel for the consumer because they only see the outside effect and the shiney new paint . For example remove the front plastic front off a ford escape and what you have is a tin bit of sheet metal and some small metal tubing but the plastic bulk makes it appear a mass of solid strength . Look at the rear frame and suspension on a ford focus , looks like a toy red wagon and is really is .

Again think plastic = oil add an inefficient electronic controlled internal combustion engine and you have a patch on an old idea at best .

And know this , if you as a ford employee at a ford dealership have to deal with the pissed off customers , ford rarely will speak direct , you get a hotline which just sends to info right back to the dealerships repair dept , trust me , I dealt with it all for 33 years . Many problems ford has , ford ford has no fix , they wait to see how techs and repairs are done through the dealerships and the dealerships are required to submit these great finds , then ford reacts .

I will keep my 1973 VW squareback . or take the bus and feel bad for the folks who buy the new rides in town .