GigaOM » CAFE

What the new fuel standard really means

Ucilia Wang — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:39:17 +0000

The White House grabbed the spotlight this past summer when it announced a new fuel efficiency standard that will require passenger cars and light trucks to achieve a combined average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a proposed rule for the new standard on Wednesday giving more details about what the administration expects the fuel economy will be for future cars (here is a helpful fact sheet).

Here’s what you need to know:

1). What model years does the new standard cover? It will affect car models 2017-2025 and calls for an incremental increase of the fuel economy during that time.

2). What is the fuel efficiency standard now?: 27 mpg. It’s set to increase to 34.1 mpg by 2016 for the combined average (passenger cars and trucks).

3). Why do we need the new standard? The proposed standard takes into consideration the greenhouse gas emissions produced by cars on the road and aims to curb that. Plus, encouraging more fuel efficient cars also means more savings for consumers, who have shown a preference for more economical cars when fuel prices go up and, well, the economy tanks.

More fuel efficient cars will require new technologies, and that in turn will likely drive up car prices. Meeting the new standard will cost the auto industry $157 billion, the government estimated. Will consumers want to pay more? The government believes the fuel savings will outstrip the higher car prices. The estimated net savings should reach anywhere from $311 billion to $421 billion during the life time of the cars sold between 2017 and 2015. Consumers should be able to save up to $6,600 on average in fuel costs for driving a 2025 model. Oil use should fall by 4 billion barrels and greenhouse gas emissions should be cut by 2 billion tons over the life time of these cars.

4). What does the 54.5 mpg really mean? The 54.5 mpg has been tossed around as the fuel efficiency goal for 2025, and there is nothing to stop car companies from making improvements to achieve it. But that figure is based on the amount of greenhouse emissions reduction the EPA wants to require for the 2025 vehicle model, and the reality is automakers will be allowed to achieve the emissions reduction goals through different measures, designed as incentives, that won’t be counted toward the fuel economy numbers. One measure is the use of more efficient air conditioning systems, which not only requires fuel to run but also releases greenhouse gas emissions in the forms of hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants.

The agencies said the fuel economy requirements they are setting will therefore increase from 40 mpg in 2017 to 56 mpg in 2025 for passenger cars and from 29.4 mpg to 40.3 mpg for light trucks. The combined average of the two will go from 35.5 mpg to 49.6 mpg.

But wait, the fuel economy numbers that future cars will actually achieve will likely to be lower than that because automakers can also use other measures, designed as incentives, to count toward their compliance, the agencies said. The incentives include emissions and other credits for making flexible fuel vehicle and electric cars. For example, the proposed rule aims to encourage the use of hybrid electric technology in full-size trucks, so manufacturers will earn credits for doing that. The manufacturers will have to incorporate these new technologies into a certain percentage of their production in order to get the credits, however.

To encourage more plug-in hybrid electric, all-electric and fuel cell cars, the proposed rule would enable the EPA to give higher values to them when calculating each manufacturer’s compliance from 2017 to 2021.

5). Do automakers like the proposal? Well, major automakers, from the Big Three to the big Asian and European car companies certainly expressed their support when the President Obama announced the intention to set a new standard in July this year. There were negotiations before the announcement, and one of the compromises was to reduce the 2025 goal from 62 mpg to 54.5 mpg. You can expect more lobbying and negotiations among the various interest groups before the final rule is set.

6). What’s next? The release of the proposed rule kick starts a 60-day public comment period, after which the agencies will hold public hearings before finalizing the rule. Since the rule will affect cars down the road, the agencies said they plan to do a mid-term evaluation of the rule to see if changes should be made.

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Free Twitter Automation Tools Roundup

Doriano "Paisano" Carta — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:00:43 +0000

There are several tools available that can schedule tweets to post at a specific time on Twitter; they can be handy for a number of reasons. For example, you could create several tweets for Monday through Friday with a list of the guests that will be appearing on your podcast or radio show. You could also schedule tweets at different days of the week announcing special promotions for your small business, restaurant or whatever. These scheduled tweets could also simply be reminders for your followers about anything else going on in your life such as a tweetup, convention or other event. Scheduled tweets can also be good for those that want to post something for their international friends or clients in different time zones.

With these tools, you are no longer required to send your tweets in real time, because you can write them in advance, making them a perfect solution for those of us who can’t find the time to jump on Twitter on a consistent, regular basis. Whenever you find a pocket of time for Twitter, you can sit down, write several tweets, and queue them up to post at a later date.

Here are some of the better free Twitter automation tools that I’ve seen. There are a few good tools that require a paying a fee, but the selections in this roundup are all free, with some of them offering a more advanced premium package, should you want or need it.

Twuffer does one thing only: sending tweets you place in its queue at the times you schedule. Nothing fancy, just a simple calendar-based interface to pick when you want your tweet to go live.

SocialOomph (an app formerly known as TweetLater) provides a suite of tools, including a free edition that includes the ability to schedule your tweets.It also provides a premium suite that includes additional tools for Twitter and Facebook automation. However, if all you want to do is schedule your tweets then the free version will do the trick. There are a couple of extra perks that I’d like to mention here. Besides scheduling tweets, the free edition of SocialOomph also lets you create and save drafts of tweets that you can reuse over and over again. While that might smack of spamming, it could actually provide some non-nefarious benefits as well, particularly if you often end up writing similar tweets. The other features I like is that it lets you use your own URL shortening service such as Bit.ly, and you can also schedule tweets to publish to multiple Twitter accounts.

FutureTweets doesn’t take the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that SocialOomph does but it does schedule tweets rather well. If that’s all you need, than this one will work for you.

HootSuite is a popular Twitter client that happens to include the ability to schedule your tweets for future posting. You can access HootSuite via its web site or any number of special desktop apps and browser add-ons. You can view, edit or delete scheduled tweets from a column called “Pending Tweets.”

Twaitter (soon to be renamed Gremlin) is another powerful suite of free services that includes a scheduler for tweets. The thing I like about this one is that it also connects to Ping.fm, which means you can not only schedule posts to Twitter but also to many other social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. It also includes an option to save drafts and includes follow management tools.

CoTweet is designed for organizations with multiple Twitter accounts and/or multiple Twitter members that work as a team to manage their online presence. Included in its arsenal of useful tools is the tweet scheduler, which has a calendar that helps schedule your tweets. Another handy tool is the ability to assign tweets as if they were tasks, thus giving your account a project manager (of sorts) for Twitter.

There you have it, just some of the free ways that you and your organization can schedule to Twitter, and some other social networks as well. Some of these services include an option to schedule recurring tweets, which could violate Twitter’s Terms of Service. Both Twitter and its members frown upon such behavior because spammers have abused this kind of feature; think twice before setting up recurring tweets too often.

Do you use any of these tools, or any others, to schedule your tweets?

Image Credit: PhotoExpress user Adam Borkowski.

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Car Buyers Want More Data & Tighter MPG Standards: Survey

Josie Garthwaite — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:00:41 +0000

“Utter market failure.” That’s how Mark Cooper, research director for the consumer advocacy group Consumer Federation of America describes the U.S. vehicle supply. For the 2010 model year, just 44 models (4 percent of all EPA-rated vehicles for the year) get 30 MPG or more, despite widespread consumer interest in more fuel efficient vehicles, according to a new survey conducted this month and released today from the group.

Published just days ahead of the deadline for public comments on tighter fuel economy standards, the CFA survey finds 78 percent of Americans support raising the bar to 35 MPG by 2016 (up from 25 MPG today) for the average MPG of an automaker’s fleet, as the Obama administration has proposed.

Go ahead with stricter standards, CFA’s survey respondents (which included 1,000 people) seem to suggest, but then open the information floodgates to let me make my own decisions. Support for “workplace programs that discourage driving alone to work,” and “feebate” programs that would offer rebates to buyers of fuel-sippers while putting a surcharge on gas guzzlers was underwhelming in the survey, with more than half of respondents opposing the ideas. But a whopping 80 percent say they support a requirement for auto companies to include MPG ratings in all TV and print ads for new vehicles, and 75 percent want to see in-dash MPG gauges.

Whether car buyers would be willing to pay a premium for these features or higher-efficiency vehicles, CFA has not explained. But drivers who want those tools have a growing number of low-cost options available via smartphone apps that build upon or mimick newer in-car displays (helping drivers track fuel consumption and save money on gas, for example). And as CalCars.org founder Felix Kramer noted to us recently, after-market options include “relatively cheap add-on for all vehicles” that can boost MPGs.

To address what the group sees as disparity between strong consumer interest in higher-efficiency vehicles and the relatively small number of high-MPG cars in the pipeline for next year (especially from U.S.-based car companies), CFA urges the Obama administration to put the Environmental Protection Agency in charge of setting fuel economy standards at 45 MPG or better by 2020, and “much higher levels in the future.”

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Apple to Open New Retail Store in Paris

Liam Cassidy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:00:10 +0000

According to reports today on ifoAppleStore and French mac site MacPlus, Paris is getting a new Apple retail store before the end of the year.

The Carousel du Louvre retail store has been adorned with banner graphics depicting the iconic colours and white click-wheel design of the iPod Nano. The largest of the banners reads “Apple Store Carousel du Louvre. Bientôt.” (For those of us who don’t speak French, “Bientôt” means “shortly” or “in the near future”.)

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that the graphic resembles the famous La Pyramide Inversée (The Inverted Pyramid), a giant skylight in the shopping mall at the Louvre Museum. ifoAppleStore cites “a tipster” who said that in 2007, Steve Jobs himself said a store would open in Paris that same year.

OK, so, maybe it’s a little late. But combined with the Windows 7 Café, this does – finally – give me a good reason to visit Paris.

Photo courtesy of MacPlus

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Wi-Fi Cafe Users Love Apple and Like to Spend

Jennifer Martinez — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:00:03 +0000

While you’re enjoying a cup of joe in a local cafe, the folks sitting around you typing on their laptops and smartphones could very well be purchasing something online. Nearly 38 percent of people who use a cafe’s Wi-Fi say they make an online purchase during their visit, according to the findings of a report released today from mobile media company JiWire. Of those, more than half say they’re making a personal buy, while just 15 percent say they’re making a business purchase.

In addition, the iPhone and iPod touch are hugely popular with the cafe crowd, the report reveals. The two Apple devices account for a whopping 98 percent of mobile gadgets used in cafes with Wi-Fi. About 54.2 percent and 43.4 percent of people using Wi-Fi in a cafe say they use the iPhone and iPod touch, respectively. (For more on the iPhone, check out our upcoming Mobilize 09 conference.) And although 74 percent of the cafe Wi-Fi crowd use PC laptops, over one-quarter are Mac users — which is notable given that Apple accounts for just 7.4 percent of the U.S. market share for notebooks. To boost its share even more, maybe Apple should target cafe goers in the future. Though it’s partnered with Starbucks before for iTunes promotions, Apple could try coming up with a clever campaign tied in with the coffee chain to boost MacBook sales.

Other notable statistics in the JiWire report are:

The first half of this year saw 9 percent growth in worldwide public Wi-Fi hotspots.
As of June, the U.S. had the highest number of public Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide (67,420), followed by China (28,678) , U.K. (27,459) , France (25,619) and Russia (14,499).
New York had the highest number of public Wi-Fi hotspots out of all U.S. cities (887) as of June. San Francisco (872) came in second, and Chicago (792) trailed behind in third. Stacey’s hometown of Austin, Texas, (417) rounded out the list by taking the 10th slot.
85 percent of Wi-Fi cafe users connect to the web at least once a week, and 68 percent stay connected for over an hour.
53 percent of Wi-Fi cafe users say they go to social media sites during their visits.

Facebook, MySpace and Twitter may want to start reaching out to large chains such as Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee. Thanks to Wi-Fi’s growing ubiquity, more people are choosing to stare at their computer screens in places other than their homes or offices.

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What You Need to Know About the New Car Emissions Standards

Josie Garthwaite — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:00:55 +0000

The Obama administration is certain about a couple things in its plan for a new national fuel economy and tailpipe emission standard: It’s meant to start taking effect in 2012, and have automakers achieving a fleet average of 35.5 MPG by 2016, four years earlier than previously required. That condensed time frame, as we wrote earlier this week, means big auto companies and young startups alike are under added pressure to get moving on green car tech.

But there are several key points on which the EPA and the Department of Transportation are undecided, as explained in their memo on the upcoming proposal, released this week. Here’s what you should know about incentives for green car innovation that are still under consideration and will open up for public comment before the rules are finalized.

Emission Limits: Just what of kind limits are we talking for greenhouse gas emissions? The feds are proposing to require a maximum average of 250 grams of carbon dioxide per mile by model year 2016, with a “generally linear phase-in” beginning with 2012 models.

Size Matters: A critical point for automakers in getting on board with the administration’s proposal is that it is “attribute-based.” The attribute that will be used to determine what emission and fuel economy standard applies to a given fleet is what’s called vehicle footprint. This is defined as “a vehicle’s wheelbase multiplied by its track width — in other words, the area enclosed by the points at which the wheels meet the ground.” Vehicle footprints will be used to calculate a unique standard for each manufacturer’s fleet, with a separate standard for passenger cars and light trucks. As explained in the memo:

Generally, manufacturers of larger vehicles (i.e. vehicles with larger footprints) would face less stringent standards [...] than manufacturers of smaller vehicles.

Final Tallies: Fleet averages will be based on final model year sales figures, not the number of cars produced.

Credit or Debit: When automakers exceed the standards for their fleet, they’ll earn credits. When they don’t make the required emission reductions/fuel economy improvements, they’ll generate debits, or negative credits.

Spending Credits: Automakers that have earned credits can spend them through: credit carry-back, credit carry-forward (like rollover minutes for emission reductions), credit transfers, and credit trading. The EPA is considering limiting carry-back (applying credits to past years) to three years, and allowing “banked” credits to apply no sooner than five years after they’re earned.

Unlimited Credit Transfers: The administration plans to propose giving an automaker the option to shuffle credits around within its fleet, using low-emission passenger cars, for example, to offset the poor performance of SUVs and trucks in the company’s lineup. The EPA envisions these credit transfers being unlimited for calculating emissions, but they would not count for fuel economy averages.

Selling, Trading = Fair Game: Automakers will be able to trade or sell their credits to other car companies.

Technologies: The administration’s memo offers a glimpse of what technologies are on its radar (and also the automakers it met with to hash out the proposal). Among the technologies that the EPA and the DOT expect automakers to consider using to meet the proposed standards are: gasoline direct injection engines, smaller engines with turbochargers, advanced transmissions, start-stop technology, high-performance tires, lighter weight vehicles, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles vehicles. The EPA is also considering offering emission credits for clean technologies that don’t register reductions in current measurement systems, such as solar panels on hybrids (a possible nod to Toyota’s new Prius and the Fisker Karma), adaptive cruise control and active aerodynamics.

Air Conditioning: The EPA is considering giving automakers the option to generate emission credits by tweaking air conditioning systems to reduce leakage of greenhouse gases (hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants and CO2). It also might let companies start racking up these credits before the other standards and systems go into effect in 2012.

Consumer Costs: While an administration official told the Associated Press that the plan could add some $600 to the cost of an average vehicle by 2016, the EPA and DOT anticipate consumers will “see cost savings due to the significant fuel savings.”

Alt-Fuels, Flex Fuel and Ethanol: The EPA may propose awarding emission credits for flex-fuel vehicles, most of which use E85 ethanol, for the model years 2012-15. It may extend these allowances if automakers that alternative fuels are “actually being used in the vehicles.” It doesn’t know yet how that demonstration should be made.

Exceptions for Small Automakers: The agency might give a special lead time for smaller automakers, allowing companies with sales of say, 400,000 vehicles or less during a specified year to face much looser standards. The idea is to let these smaller companies work with the standards of a company that has a much larger (125 percent) vehicle footprint level.

Carrots for Early Movers: The EPA may award early credits for 2009-11 models for fleets that exceed California emission standards.

Super Credits: The EPA is considering giving “super credits” as a reward for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. As explained in the memo:

These “super credits” could take the form of a multiplier that would be applied to the number of vehicles sold such that they would count as more than one vehicle in the manufacturer’s fleet average.

The Sticks: Penalties will likely be assessed based on a manufacturer’s most polluting vehicles.

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Daily Sprout

Josie Garthwaite — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:30:16 +0000

What Was Detroit Thinking?: After decades of battling, complaining and maneuvering over fuel economy standards, why did carmakers decide to fall in line with a tough, new nationwide MPG standard this week? — New York Times

Climate Outlook Gets Gloomier: New climate modeling suggests that without rapid and massive action, global warming in this century will be no less than twice as severe as estimated six years ago. — MIT News Office

UK Car Clubs Cut Carbon: A new survey from the Transport Research Laboratory finds members of car-sharing services in the UK are less likely to drive than non-members, opting instead to walk, bike or use public transit, and an average vehicle available through these “car clubs” is about 35 percent more efficient than an average private vehicle. — TheGreenCarWebsite UK

Dems Hold Off Energy Amendments: House Democrats defeated 14 hours worth of amendments proposed by GOP lawmakers and put to vote in a markup session for the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill yesterday. — ClimateWire via NYT

ARPA-E Underway: The DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program, designed to fund high-risk clean energy development, is now accepting proposals. Cold fusion inventors are among those anxious to get in line. — WSJ’s Environmental Capital

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Obama MPG Proposal Raises Stakes for Green Car Tech

Josie Garthwaite — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:43:26 +0000

Automakers received yet another push this morning to accelerate efforts to clean up their fleets, with the unveiling of tough, new limits for tailpipe emissions set to take effect in 2012. If the big automakers were interested in bringing startups with clean vehicle technology into the fold before as a way to leapfrog lengthy internal R&D efforts — Daimler, for example, teamed up with Tesla Motors this morning to help get an electric version of its Smart model on the road as soon as possible, and Chrysler tapped startup A123Systems for lithium-ion batteries in hopes of getting its ENVI lineup off the ground — they may now have added pressure to consider such deals.

The Obama administration’s proposal includes a 39 MPG average for automakers’ passenger car lineups, plus a 30 MPG average for light trucks and 35.5 MPG overall — all by 2016. That’s four years earlier than required under the current standards, established as part of the 2007 energy bill. The proposal has tighter standards beginning to take effect in 2012.

The administration wants to go beyond fuel economy to also address pollution. If the proposed rules make it through the EPA and the Transportation Department, it will be the first time the U.S. combines MPG standards and tailpipe pollution controls into a single regulation. It will also be the first national fuel economy standard, as Obama has largely taken up the stricter standards proposed by California and 13 other states. As the Associated Press notes, handing CAFE standards development and enforcement over to the federal government could be a boon for states like California with mounting budget troubles.

The accelerated time table means automakers that are already playing catchup on batteries and other clean technologies have less time to boost their fuel economy and shrink their emissions. This means startups that have cutting-edge technology already in the works could draw more interest from auto companies feeling pressure to meet the proposed national standards. It also intensifies the time pressure on startups racing to grab big licensing or supply deals. Accelerated MPG improvements might in the near term help startups like shocks developer Levant Power and fuel-injection system maker Transonic Combustion, as well as battery makers like GM technology partner Sakti3 and A123Systems.

But as we’ve noted before, persuading automakers to adopt a startup’s MPG-boosting technology isn’t easy: Most young ventures haven’t had time to gather data about how their systems function long term, which automakers, thinking about considerable warranty costs, will want to have before committing to big supply deals. General Motors, for example, chose South Korea-based LG Chem over runner-up A123Systems as the supplier for its Chevy Volt battery cells, in part to avoid the risk that comes with working with a young company.

Efficient diesel engines may also get a boost. As we wrote recently, diesel engines have a role to play in helping automakers meet tightening fuel economy standards over the near term, and thus in the next generation of vehicles on U.S. roads. Startups ready to license technology to U.S. companies or sell plug-and-play components may be able to ride that wave.

Having a better idea of what vehicle standards will look like for the next seven years is important for automakers weighing investments in green car technology, as the U.S. Auto Alliance wrote in a statement this morning:

Automakers would know what standards will be through 2016, which is critical in an industry where bringing a product to market typically takes five to seven years. The National Program is intended to give automakers sufficient lead-time to incorporate technology as part of existing vehicle design schedules, so manufacturers would not have to incur added costs from redesigning all their models at one time.

The question now (well, one of them, at least) is how much of that they’ll do in-house, through established suppliers — and how much they’ll turn to startups. In order to make “sustainable mobility” a reality, Auto Alliance President and CEO David McCurdy said in the group’s release, “we will need to use every engineer we have and every investment dollar available.”

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Is Verizon Really Ready to Open Up Its Network?

Stacey Higginbotham — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:03:35 +0000

Verizon Wireless today issued a call for developers to attend a May 13 conference to learn how to develop devices for the fourth-generation LTE network due to roll out starting in 2010. And in keeping with the requirements set by the FCC when the carrier won the chunk of 700 MHz spectrum at auction last year, there’s a lot of talk about openness and transparency in the announcement. But will Verizon really use this as a starting point to bring open devices to its network, or is this just a way to keep regulators happy?

Verizon hosted this type of conference in March of last year, promoting its openness and calling for developers to build gadgets that would run on its network. Nine months later, in January of 2009, it had fewer than 30 open devices to show off on its 3G network — none of which were consumer-facing. That’s not the level of openness the industry was hoping for.

The mandates associated with the 700 MHz spectrum may change things up a bit, but I’m not terribly confident that healthy competition among devices will result, especially on the voice or even data access card side. Verizon’s CEO has claimed the carrier will see 500 percent subscription penetration with LTE, but my guess is that we’ll see openness geared toward e-readers, MP3 players and M2M applications rather than the ability to port a phone or data card from one LTE network to another. Any device a developer builds that Verizon doesn’t like can still be held up in its testing labs, which means some truly innovative uses for always-on mobility may never see the light of day on Verizon’s supposedly open network.

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After 20+ Years, Feds Raise the Bar on MPG for Cars

Josie Garthwaite — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:56:18 +0000

If you have your eye on a 50 MPG gen-3 Prius hybrid or a 150 MPG plug-in Volt, the new CAFE standards won’t seem like much. But the Department of Transportation’s plan to require automakers’ car and truck lineups to have an average fuel efficiency of 27.3 MPG by 2011 — an increase of 2 MPG over the 2010 standard — is a significant step: This is the first increase for passenger vehicle fuel efficiency since before A Flock of Seagulls was anything but a bunch of birds.

According to Obama administration officials who spoke with the Detroit News and Associated Press late yesterday ahead of this morning’s official announcement, the new standards will require automakers’ 2011 passenger cars (rolling into showrooms in late 2010) to get an average of 30.2 MPG. Light truck fleets (including SUVs, pickups and minivans) will need an average of 24.1 MPG.

The move signals that the Obama administration intends to raise the bar on automakers, although not quite as quickly as some environmentalists had hoped and the Bush administration proposed, but delayed, implementing (27.8 MPG average for 2011). The Department of Transportation said in its announcement this morning that a multiyear fuel economy plan for post-2011 models is “already well under way.”

Auto companies — two of which have received $17.4 billion in federal loans and requested an additional $21.6 billion — have protested that the new standards will cost the industry $1.5 billion. Tighter standards are on the way: An energy law passed in 2007 mandates a minimum 35 MPG fleet average by 2020.

The 2011 efficiency uptick could save millions of gallons of fuel (up to 887 million gallons of fuel, according to the Department of Transportation). That is, if we don’t base our driving habits strictly on our budgets, as David Owen argues in this week’s New Yorker that we’re prone to do: We spend about the same amount on gas each month, but drive more if gas is cheaper or we get more miles to the gallon. As Owen explains:

If doubling the cost of gas gives drivers an environmentally valuable incentive to drive less—the recent oil-price spike pushed down consumption and vehicle miles traveled, stimulated investment in renewable energy, increased public transit ridership, and killed the Hummer—then doubling the efficiency of cars makes that incentive disappear.

Even if the gains don’t disappear entirely (let’s face it: not everyone watches their fuel spending with such precision), the call for a gas tax hike to help bolster gas-sipping vehicle sales has garnered some unlikely supporters — Ford CEO Alan Mulally and AutoNation CEO Michael Jackson, for example. “I have fuel-efficient vehicles parked at my dealerships as far as the eye can see,” Jackson told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month after Mulally called for higher gas prices. “I can’t give them away.” Mulally said he wants the government to “involve the consumer in our energy policy,” giving them a stronger financial incentive (think: $4 a gallon gasoline) to opt for smaller and more fuel-efficient cars.

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