Back home this morning on the latest leg of his “Mission Accomplished” tour, President Obama spoke at Ford’s Chicago assembly plant where he celebrated a green, $6 billon federal loan to build Ford’s new. . . . gas-guzzling Ford Explorer SUV?<\/p>\n
Obama is touting his transformation of U.S. automakers into designers of lean, mean, fuel-efficient fighting machines. “Ford dedicated itself to increasing fuel efficiency of more than a dozen of its models. And the Department of Energy awarded Ford a two-year loan commitment to help make that happen,” said Obama. “And Ford used that loan to retool this factory to build the next-generation Explorer. That’s a model that will be up to 30 percent more fuel efficient.”<\/p>\n
A fuel-efficient, 6-cylinder, 17 mpg SUV. Well, it depends on what your definition of “fuel-efficient” is. Because, while most buyers of the new Explorer will likely opt for the 6-cylinder engine, Ford is responding to strict new federal mpg rules by also offering a 23 mpg, 4-cylinder turbocharged Ecoboost engine (which explains the the 30 percent increase over the current six). Will consumers buy a 4-cylinder engine in a 4600-lb. vehicle? Will anyone buy the line that 23 mpg is “fuel-efficient” car?<\/p>\n
That seems a stretch. But so is the claim that SUVs are green cars deserving DOE money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back home this morning on the latest leg of his “Mission Accomplished” tour, President Obama spoke at Ford’s Chicago assembly plant where he celebrated a green, $6 billon federal loan to build Ford’s new. . . . gas-guzzling Ford Explorer SUV? Obama is touting his transformation of U.S. automakers into designers of lean, mean, fuel-efficient […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5567,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566\/revisions\/5567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}