MPG Changes

One of the most important technological improvements that must be made in the next decade is an improvement in automobile fuel efficiency. Because car companies can make money by producing the largest cars and the biggest/baddest engines possible, many companies feel that good fuel efficiency is not always necessary to be able to compete in the market. Dodge, for example, has been pushing muscle cars like the charger and camero, which satisfy their target market, but consume gasoline at a very high rate. Last thursday the Obama administration unveiled a plan to bump up the US mpg average up to 35.5 mpg by 2016. I am hoping that this plan will help to push an industry to "wake up an smell the coffee" when it comes to producing cars. I feel as though we got a brief experience of the issues that result from the high cost of gas guzzlers when the gas prices rose to all time highs a few summers ago, but there needs to be more action to push the industry to make changes. I am hoping that this policy at least forces companies to be more environmentally responsible and help fund research to find future sources of energy in automobiles. From the mindset of a chemical engineering student, this issue will be paramount for the industry until it is solved.