Not a single hybrid vehicle can be found in the entire nation. Why would that be? Gasoline was running about 1.40 EUR per liter last week in Dusseldorf. As global oil is denominated on the dollar and the dollar is weak viz the Euro, that works out to $7.85 a gallon. At almost $8, not one hybrid?
At $3.25 here in my Merika we pitch a fit and snap up all these Japanese hybrids at a premium as a precautionary response to "outrageous" prices. We build a handful of solar powered hydrogen fueling stations and declare the hydrogen economy is right around the corner. We drive the price of Mexican tortillas up to burn Iowa corn in our tanks. We stop to consider Mr. Pickens and begin to think about running our WalMart and autocentric economy on wind-backed natural gas. But at almost eight bucks a gallon in Europe, they do the only rational thing: they simply don't fucking drive.
I don't think for a second there are CAFE fleet standards in Germany (or Europe for that matter). They don't need them because they already employ the best solution: correct gasoline taxation. I say correct because they don't subsidize the social damages caused by the perpetual motoring of its inhabitants as we do here in the U.S.
How are CAFE standards possibly going to work here in the U.S. when gasoline remains relatively cheap? We continue to provide incentives to squander energy. We continue to provide incentives to maintain our interstate suburban highway system. We would never build new communities like the picture above: medium density, a beautiful public realm, walkable and bikable communities, communities that share their space with cars but don't allow them to dominate. Places that are fairly quiet, where an open window to bring in fresh air won't also bring in the sounds of a six-lane collector road, places with a sufficient level of human eyes to provide a correct sense of security without resorting to razor wire barracades and roll-down chain-mail barriers.
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