Before this week, the last time US politicians had put such a tight squeeze on the automobile industry over the fuel efficiency of its vehicles was 1975. It's now been 32 long years since the first standards were introduced - known as CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) - and all attempts to significantly improve them over this period have been soundly rebuffed by the predictable vested interests. Of course, there is no guarantee that the new standards, which were passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday, will survive a Senate filibuster, or a veto from the White House, but the new Democrat-inspired standards at least point to a coming sea-change in the US over its attitude towards tackling climate change. That's the hope, anyway.
Only by looking at the newly-proposed fuel economy standards do you realise quite how little has been done over the years by regulators to arm-twist the manufacturers into upping their game on this hugely important issue. According to the US Department of Transport, the average fuel economy of a new car today stands at 27.5 miles per gallon - a figure that's remained static since the late 1980s. In 1982, it stood at 24mpg. For a "light truck" (SUVs, 4x4s, etc), the average today stands at 22.5mpg. It's a pitiful state of affairs that the car industry hasn't been motivated enough to improve these averages in any significant way over such a long period - but when you've got air conditioning to fit as standard, and consumers demanding ever-larger vehicles, then fuel economy comes low down on the list of priorities.
But two new priorities now ring loud and clear in the regulators' ears - climate change and fast-rising oil prices (rearrange these two in order of priority for US politicians, as you choose). If you accept that it is a rare, frankly as yet unelected, politician who can convince people to drive their vehicles fewer miles each year, then the only hope of tackling rising transport-related emissions is to seek alternative fuels or greatly improve the efficiency of all vehicles consuming fossil fuels.
The new energy bill, which was passed by a vote of 235-181, demands that the car industry's average fuel economy must improve 40% by 2020 and achieve 35mpg. This sounds like a big rise at first, but considering it is coming from such a low base-point, it doesn't exactly invoke optimism that we have a chance of ever meeting the overall 80%-90% reductions targets across all sectors by 2050, as is now becoming the mantra for an increasing number of politicians. And it could yet be torn up, or compromised, as it continues its passage through Congress.
Things are not much better in Europe. In October, the European Parliament voted to back a much-watered-down emissions reductions target for vehicles. In 1994, a voluntary target had been set for the industry, whereby average CO2 emissions should not exceed 120 grams per kilometre per vehicle by 2012. This tactic has clearly failed, but after much horse-trading earlier this year, the target was finally fixed at 125g/km by 2015. At the time, European environmentalists described it as a "massive setback" for Europe's climate policy. Tackle transport emissions, the theory goes, and you've cracked by far the hardest nut.
What must Amory Lovins make of all this? For decades now, as one of the world's most respected energy advisors, he has argued that improving fuel efficiencies year-on-year across all sectors benefits everyone (well, except for a few oil producers). Whether your concern is climate change, global political instability, or just squeezing the most from your dollar, everyone should want and seek fuel-efficiency gains. It's the ultimate no-brainer. Lovins has even advised the Pentagon - the world's largest buyer of oil - on how to reduce the amount of fuel it consumes on its excursions abroad through efficiency savings. In 2002, as the US prepared for another conflict in oil-rich Iraq, Lovins pointed out an off-beam way to avert such conflicts in the future. Simply by improving the average fuel economy of cars in the US by 2.7mpg, he said, it would extinguish the need for the US to import any oil from the Persian Gulf.
Lovins also often talks of a Japanese concept known as muda as another way of greatly improving fuel efficiencies over time. Muda is one of the Japanese terms for describing "waste" within any system. Combined with muri (lack of standardisation) and mura (inconsistencies), these underpin the business philosophy of Toyota in which it seeks to eradicate the "seven wastes" - Defects, Overproduction, Transportation, Waiting, Inventory, Motion and Overprocessing. This meticulous attempt to iron out any inefficiency in its systems (also sometimes referred to as "Lean Manufacturing") helped Toyota overtake General Motors to become the world's largest car manufacturer earlier this year. It has also played a huge part in Toyota becoming synonymous with hybrid technology, as displayed in its popular Prius.
Just how long do we have to wait before this attention to detail - when it comes to improving efficiencies, particularly fuel efficiency - becomes the norm across not just the car industry, but all sectors?
