Whenever there’s an opportunity to reduce the weight of a car or light-duty truck, it’s that reduced weight which moves us closer… “to [meeting] the 2025 CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards,” says Brain Fish, North American Automotive Marketing Manager at Dupont. An average goal set for passenger cars and light-duty trucks is 54.5 mpg by 2025. That makes lighter vehicles top priority.
Over the last few years, CAFE standards in vehicles have continued to be hotly deliberated.
Though opinions on the subject will always vary, indicate that US fuel economy standards have already demonstrated big savings on fuel and emissions.
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.
