The CEO of Ford Motor Company went straight to President Trump with the dire warning that if fuel economy standards aren’t relaxed, the employment consequences could be severe.
Mark Fields is the man at the top of Ford, and in a recent meeting with President Trump he revealed that up to a million jobs in the United States could be on the line if the major car producers are not allowed to wiggle out of the CAFE agreements that were signed in 2011.
Ford Motor Company just recorded the second most profitable year in its history but apparently they need to be able to make even more money, and see cutting down on the production of non-gas burners as their ticket to those sweet, sweet profits.
Mr. Fields cites the reluctance of the American consumer to embrace new automotive technologies as the major problem, and expressed the need to let the market decide what kind of emissions standards are best for the nation.
A rough equivalent to this line of thought would be allowing the first grade members of an elementary-school class to determine the cafeteria menu for the school year, or perhaps we could let the alcoholics and frat boys of America guide us to the proper tax rate for liquor.
The whole idea of a system of emissions controls is that when are people left to their own devices, they make really horrible decisions about consumption. In the case of automobiles those bad decisions result in heightened emissions.
There is of course a huge demand for electric cars, just not Ford’s models. There are more than 300,000 reservations for Tesla’s upcoming model 3, which represents around 2 years of Ford Focus sales.
With President Trump’s stance on the environment, I would not be surprised to find out that he was looking into coal fired automobiles as a solution to “our” energy needs.
There has been no official communication from the Office of The President as it concerns Mr. Fields’ suggestion that the CAFE standards be “relaxed”, and it is not known from what research the CEO of Ford divined his number of 1,000,000 lost jobs.
It is likely that Mr. Fields will find a sympathetic ear with President Trump, given the President’s recent decision that climate change isn’t real, and his love of burning fossil fuels.
On the plus side, California may cut funding to the Federal Government and succeed from the Union, so at least people will have a place to go if they want to escape from crazyland.
[via autoblog ]
