Hang on to your gas guzzlers...

they just became more valuable.

Instead of letting the consumers decide how to respond to higher gas taxes with a mix of conservation, public transport, choice of smaller vehicles, or moving closer to work, the Obama Administration is getting into the car design business:

Instead of the simplest, most obvious and least expensive way of achieving that end - raising the national excise tax on petrol - the president was again relying on a complex, dirigiste intervention. ...

The basic problem with the CAFE standards is that, rather than altering patterns of demand, they attempt to ration supply. This flaw is exacerbated by the divide in the rules between standards for "cars" and for "light trucks", which Detroit has ingeniously exploited.

Apparently, we aren't quite through with junk (social) science.

The conventional wisdom is that Americans like big vehicles and not much can be done about it, but the evidence is that they behave much like other consumers. When the oil price rose sharply last year, sales of light trucks collapsed and demand for hybrid petrol/electric cars rose. As it fell again, the old patterns returned.

Where are the administration's economists when we need them?