Hillary Clinton Backs 40 MPG Standard

Hillary Clinton Backs 40 MPG Standard

She wasn’t going to get many votes from the captains of Detroit’s auto industry anyway, but now Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has guaranteed they won't vote for her as she upped the ante in the fuel economy debate.

On Monday, Clinton called for a 60 percent increase in fuel economy standards by 2020 for a combined fleet average of 40 miles per gallon and a combined fleet average of 55 miles per gallon by 2030. To soften the blow, she also called for $3 billion in battery research and $20 billion in government-backed “Green Vehicle” bonds to help automakers shift to more efficient vehicles. She also promoted tax breaks for plug-in hybrid and government purchases of plug-in hybrids -– 100,000 by 2015.

Not surprisingly, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing Detroit automakers as well as Toyota, called her proposals unrealistic. They claim stricter fuel economy standards would cost them more than $100 billion.

In a speech in Iowa, Clinton said stricter standards would save consumers more than $180 billion in fuel bills annually and the U.S. would save 4.5 million barrels of oil a day.

"I'm not going to ask the auto companies to do it alone. I want to be a partner, a good partner, to help them transition to a clean energy future," Clinton said in her speech.

Clinton is not alone; presidential candidates from both parties have backed various forms of stricter fuel-economy standards.

Her goofiest remark, apparently borrowed from a 2003 Sierra Club advertising campaign, came when she said: "Henry Ford would be dumbfounded until he opened the hood. Because he would recognize the internal combustion engine underneath. It is the same basic concept that he put into the Model T almost a century ago. In fact, that Model T got better gas mileage than your typical SUV does today. We can't continue this. It's time for a change."

Indeed, the gas-powered internal combustion engine remains the engine of choice today. However, it is vastly different from the one Henry Ford installed in his early cars.

But as the Detroit Free Press pointed out in its sidebar on the Clinton story that federal statistics show the average 2007 SUV gets 18 mpg; the Model T, which weighed a mere 1,200 pounds, had no safety equipment and had a top speed of 45 miles per hour, got 15 mpg. According to the Free Press’ calculations, the typical 2007 SUV is 4.5 times more efficient than the Model T.

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.