Recently it was announced that President Obama would be ordering the EPA to review its rejection of California's waiver for the clean air act, allowing the state to require stricter fuel efficiency for cars sold in the state (Obama's Order is Likely to Tighten Auto Standards).
Car makers, who applauded President Bush's stand against this waiver were vocal in their complaints against this reversal. “Applying California standards to several different states would create a complex, confusing and very difficult situation for manufacturers,” says Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.
For some, it is hard to understand how this change could cause such confusion for automakers (when asked, 9 out of 10 small children said the automakers should apply the same standards to all states). Besides, California has been setting the standard for 40 years, what is different now?
To find out, we visited one of the big automakers to see what could cause such consternation. Territo, pointing to a wide slot in the wall of the R&D department, "Here's where a waiver starts its journey," and pushes a mock envelope through the opening. Quickly, we were ushered though a door and onto a catwalk on the other side of the wall. Here the intricacies and delcate dance of the manufacturing process were revealed.
The envelope lands on a metal tray, hung by rope from the ceiling. As the slight increase in weight by the envelope pulls the tray down, the rope, wound around a wheel, begins turning a large toothed wheel. This wheel turns a second wheel set 90 degrees from it. A tab on this second wheel rotates slowly to push a bright red lever joined with a spring. When the lever is released, the spring flips the lever back, suddenly impacting a boot hung from a bar. Sent swinging by the force, this boot then kicks over a bucket, which releases a steel ball down a switchbacked track. At the bottom, the ball rolls within a half pipe to impact a long upright pole. This allows a delicately balanced ball, far above at the top of this pole, to be dislodged from its roost, and roll into an empty bathtub suspended high above the factory floor. The ball rolls to the end of the tub where it falls through a hole and lands on one end of a see-saw, propelling a life sized mannequin in a diving pose backward into a waiting tub. Then it all stops.
"See, the new waiver just doesn't have the heft of the lower MPG designs we usually send this way," says Territo. "If that rope in the beginning doesn't get pulled fast enough, it really throws a monkey wrench into the works." To comply with these new laws, "we'd probably have to put a lit candle on a roller skate here," Territo says, pointing at some empty space in the contraption, "and have it kicked by a boot some how, to roll and then burn a string over here." As Territo notes, such a candle addition would cost the automakers millions in new candles per year. "This simply isn't a feasible restriction."
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