I disagree, there is plenty of time for engineers to build better engines that get better gas mileage without losing power, I mean look at how far the Hemi has come in just 5 years. Same size engine, now with more power and better highway mileage. We may see a slight decrease in horsepower, but I believe 30 mpg is reachable.

 

I would rather take the bus in town or cab for that matter because if you really add it up, I don't go out that much, rent a car for long highway trips. Never see me buy some frikken YUGO or and little pile of ****. Wait till everyone realizes that fiat achieves the mileage they do because ALL their cars in Europe are stick shift.....tell your wives guys that their next car with be stick. Good luck. Not only that they are gonna be so expensive to insure it was on the news tonight small cars in low speed accidents suffer extensive damage compared to large vehicles. If i had a low spee head on with lets say mini cooper, i would need bumper or just the bumper cover. the mini will need that, grill, hood cowl, maybe windshield, fenders, so I say we are all gonna take an insurance hit when all these little cars hit the road. Gonna keep my tank. My insurance went down for my 45G truck from a 30G Charger??????Avenger went up and it was 20G. Avenger will suffer the most in a small accident, basically same as the sebring, my son got in a small accident, the sebring bent in all the places it was supposed to air bag did not deploy...car decided was not necessary but frame said yes bend her and there and there and here, enough to write the car off. That is how they get 5 star crash,,,you are safe but your car disinegrates, so you pay the insurance.

 

The most expensive insurance bill I ever had was on an 02 Neon. Small cars are horrible on insurance.

 

hedger,
I bought my first new pickup truck 32 years ago. It was a 1977 1/2 ton Chevy 4x4, with a 350 V-8, 3.73 gears, weighed 5300 lbs, and it got 13 mpg. My last new pickup was this 2009 1/2 ton Dodge 4x4, with a 348 V-8, 3.92 gears, weighs 5300 lbs, and it gets 13 mpg.

The 2010s are already in production (as soon as Chrysler fires up their factories again). So that gives them six years before the 30 mpg pickup trucks have to be on the market. Considering that it takes two years lead time to get newly developed products actually in production, that means they really have 4 years to do the development work. In 32 years they have gained nothing, but in four years they are going to almost triple the fuel mileage of pickup trucks? With all respect, I do not see that happening without dramatically downsizing both engine size and vehicle size in what is currently considered to be a pickup truck.

MOPWR2U

 

Watched an interview from the CEO of Honda discussing the new fuel stanards, he said they are almost there allready on their cars but the pickups will have to be completly redesigned smaller and lighter. Also from an earlier post in this thread about standard transimissions I also read that most of their cars are unaircontitioned, they sell to N.Korea and russia little yugo clones,( yugo clones was my view,not in the article) Also read that 8 months ago all the auto manufacturers, ford,gm, chrysler,honda,toyoto, etc, all of them are completely against these same stanards( which are the California standards that California wanted), now they all are for it when Oboma declaired it, now we know why GM and Chrysler had to agree but the article questioned the truth of the others being all suddenly onboard