Interesting that the Mini Cooper gets the rebate while the Honda Fit, which uses only 0.1 litre/100 kilometres more, is SOL.
Posted at 2007-03-22 14:47:48 [PermaLink]This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing *if* they had provided plenty of advance notice about targets, instead of just blindsiding the industry.
Posted at 2007-03-22 15:28:28 [PermaLink]Otter makes a good point. Most of these manufacturers have a selection of even more anemic shitbox motors for sale in other markets which they'll now be able to bring here.
Posted at 2007-03-22 16:52:17 [PermaLink]What the Big 3 are missing is that these rebates should be looked at as incentive to design/build more models that meet the criteria.
Posted at 2007-03-22 18:12:13 [PermaLink]Sounds both good and bad
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So, are there any conservative bloggers looking into Cabinet members disclosures? As in, who has shares in Toyota?
I expect to hear... (crickets)
Good grief djb, do 60 seconds of research. Toyota sold 7,974,000 vehicles last year. ([External Link]If 34,202 Yaris were sold in Canada last year, this would constitute 0.43% of annual Toyota sales. The effect of a $1000 rebate in Canada would be insignificant in terms of share price.
Posted at 2007-03-23 06:32:09 [PermaLink]You're telling me that auto manufacturers needed *more* advance warning that fuel economy was a big issue? Really?
Should we break the news to them that safety standards are going to rise in the future as well? Maybe inform them that at some point the materials used in their cars will be subject to environmental impact assessment?
Toyota has shown, once again, why it is on top of its game. It's leading the field in creating the cars for the present and future market. The fact that their competitive advantage is boosted by this only shows what a true advantage it is to be a well managed company.
Look for Honda and any other company that has any innovative capability (sorry GM) to squeeze their fuel consumption down in the 2008 models. You can bet the Fit will hit the magic number and I'd be shocked if they didn't have a 2008 (maybe 2009) Civic that gets the rebate as well.
Trust Dara to miss the point.
Yes, safety standards change. So do emissions standards. Manufacturers get plenty of warning about those changes, though, and are legally required to meet those standards. But that's beside the point - neither has nothing to do with rebate incentives.
I'm sure manufacturers are aware that fuel economy is an issue for consumers. They do market research. What they were not and could not have been aware of was that a massive financial advantage would be immediately conferred upon vehicles which are underneath an arbitrary limit of dubious real-world correlation, while vehicles above that limit would get nothing. The 0.1L/100km "difference" by which the Fit misses the target, for instance, is insignificant, and certainly not worth $1000.
Crispytoast gets it. Why 6.5 and not 6.6 litres/100 km. other than it's a nice round number. The difference between the two is 0.66 miles per gallon and for that the Fit is hit with a $1,000 pricing handicap with no warning.
Posted at 2007-03-23 10:15:56 [PermaLink]I'm guessing 6.5 was chosen because it only qualifies a few stingy cars instead of subsidizing half the cars purchased. It's apparently a hard number to hit, for everyone except Toyota.
With the absolute obsession of auto manufacturers to phrase every positive point about their cars as "best in class", this rebate would be available to any manufacturer who decided to compete with Toyota's vehicles to get the best mileage in the subcompact and compact classes.
You can bet that the manufacturers will not hesitate to chase the Yaris and Corolla down now that they are paying the price for not doing it sooner.
An advance warning of this would have just set off a useless and unproductive spat of political mess. You'd have the usual suspects on the right saying that it's a waste of money. You'd have the auto companies lobbying to raise it to 6.685 so that they could slip in a couple of models without doing any work to improve them. You'd have Buzz Hargrove whining about... actually I have no idea, but I'm sure he'd chime in with something inane to waste newsprint with.
It's done and it's going to provide a great impetus to manufacturers to chase fuel economy. They won't stop chasing better numbers either, because if these type of regulations are implemented as they were this time, they won't know what's "good enough", they'll just try to do better.