UM: Auto Industry

In the Washington Post’s Car Culture column, Warren Brown writes about the challenges of making fuel-efficient cars for the U.S. market. He cites a recent study by UM’s Transportation Research Institute as an example of academia perpetuating a myth about consumer demand for such vehicles: “The study and its core argument – that fuel economy is a profitable opportunity in the United States missed by domestic car companies who ignored U.S. consumer demands for better vehicle mileage – constitute rich topsoil for environmentalists who have long made the same claim. But it gets washed away in a market flooded with cheap gasoline, here defined as a gallon of regular unleaded priced below $4.00.” [Source]