CAFE Standard: Superheroes Aren’t the Only Beneficiaries. From time to time, news stories will flood the channels of humans performing remarkable feats of strength. These amazing displays generally take place when someone sees a loved one’s life put in danger. With what’s clinically called “hysterical strength,” people have even been known to lift cars.
Is Finite Element Analysis on your radar for projects you plan to develop during 2019? If not, it should be.
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is an engineering technique used to obtain “approximate solutions of boundary value problems.” By running the specs of your prototype through FEA software, technicians are able to determine strengths, weaknesses, and potential refinements.
Since the initial establishment of CAFE standards in the 1970s, periodic changes have been instituted to accommodate for growth, industry changes, and new information. As with most changes, each announcement has been met with a wide variety of reactions, from sharp criticism to fawning praise. The government’s most recent announcement has been no exception to this.
Are CAFE standards rising or falling? If we know one thing about American policy and lawmaking, it’s that nothing stays static forever. Over the past centuries of our country’s history, we’ve enacted laws, rolled them back, and reenacted new ones in their places. This is the shape of progress: sometimes we must take a step back in order to take new steps forward.
It is certainly easy to see how tube hydroforming has transformed certain aspects of the automotive industry. At least, it is easy to see if you know what tube hydroforming is.
Most private citizens are unaware that current CAFE standards exist, let alone what they mean and how they impact our society. That doesn’t mean that the average person remains unaffected by them, though.
Before we get to specifics, however, let’s consider what CAFE standards actually are and what they’re intended to accomplish.
Those who work outside very specific industries, such as the hydroforming or automotive industries, probably do not give much thought to current CAFE standards. In fact, many of them might not even be familiar with the term. Nevertheless, CAFE standards do impact their lives in specific ways.
CAFE Standards Help Save Money All Around. Much has been written in recent days about the state of the U.S. economy. While we are certainly not a poor nation, if we compare ourselves now to ourselves in days gone by, we’re not doing as well as we have in the past.
According to Financial Times, although things are picking up, the economy continues to under perform.
[Gross] domestic product is sluggish, productivity growth is down and, though wages are ticking up, incomes have hardly budged.
But our situation is not hopeless.
In a world where more and more emphasis is being placed on leaving fewer carbon footprints, fuel economy has become an important issue for auto manufacturers across the country. Not only are auto manufacturers attempting to meet the demands of more environment-conscious consumers, they are also trying to avoid paying large sums of money for stiff penalties by complying with Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards.
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards regulate the fuel economy of vehicles sold in the United States. Rather than requiring minimum fuel efficiency standards for each vehicle, CAFE requires that each manufacturer’s average fuel economy meet certain requirements.
