Why dont cars today get as much or more mpg as geo metro 58 mpg?

Answer 1

There really is no incentive for the automotive companies to either design or produce high mpg vehicles. Even though there are government mandates for mileage on U.S. cars, this is a misnomer. The law more or less states a manufacturer must meet mileage standards as an average of all cars produced. And, there are plenty of ways to maximize the driving tests for a vehicle, many of questionable/ethical and borderline legal. Also, often the government allows the auto manufacturer to perform their own testing and simply accepts the data, with little to absolutely no oversight.

Also, vehicles that get high mpg also tend to be smaller, lower cost vehicles, such as the Metro, that have very little profit margin when selling. As an example, from an automotive engineer I inquired to regarding this very topic, the automotive company makes about $4000 profit in the sale of a full size pickup, but only $600 on a small Metro type vehicle. They produce them only to meet the government standard mentioned above, not for real profit making.

Even though the $140+ price per barrel oil costs of 2008 are over for now at least, the three decades of producing low mpg vehicles and marketing heavily to the American consumer to buy and buy into the full size pickup and SUV vehicles concept, this is ultimately short sited ideology. Without innovation and design pushing towards more efficient vehicles and more realistic vehicle usage, the consumption of oil and gas continues to prove to be a weakness to the U.S. economy and safety. Cases in point, there is no need to have an SUV to drive in cities and suburbs, to and from work or running errands on paved and maintained roads. And somehow, not many years ago, we somehow managed to pack a family of five into a mid-size vehicle, and be able to drive about our daily lives without all being killed because we didn't have eight tons of steel surrounding us, contrary to what marketing has spent so many years convincing us otherwise.

Disclaimer: I do not belong to any environmental groups, have never chained myself to a tree, or held a protest sign outside a power plant. I do, however, recycle my paper/plastics/metal in my home, and drive a Metro with 150,000+ miles on it, still getting 40+ mpg.