http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/106842/article.html
Test #5 Check Your Tire Pressure

Result: Important for safety and to reduce tire wear
Cold Hard Facts: No measurable effect on the vehicles we tested
Recommendation: Check your tire pressure often but don’t expect a big savings.

“They’re making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant, you know? They think it’s funny that they’re making fun of something that is actually true.”

“we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups.”

According to the DOE, 3.3% is the maximum estimated savings for a car with 4 underinflated tires. Are all of the tires in America underinflated? If 100% of our tires are underinflated, then Obama’s 3-4% is possible. According to the NHTSA, 27% of cars have one or more underinflated tires. Only 3% have four underinflated tires. Of all the tires in the country, only 12-13% are underinflated. So, the real savings (assuming EVERYONE pumps up their tires) is about 0.4%

Perhaps Obama put the decimal point in the wrong place.

By the way, where I live 0.4% is less than 1.5 cents per gallon. McCain’s gas tax holiday would save 12x that much per gallon.

A 0.4% improvement on approximately 19 million barrels of crude per day is about 76 thousand barrels IF everyone inflates their tires. The other 124 thousand would have to come from tune ups. For this to be the case, more than one in seven cars on the road would have to be in desperate need of a tune up (in order to get the maximum benefit in fuel efficiency that Barack’s math assumes).

It just doesn’t add up.

2. What is appropriate motor vehicle maintenance? As required, safety and preventive maintenance inspections shall be performed on FHWA-owned and -leased motor vehicles by Motor Vehicle Fleet Managers. Special attention should be given to the following items: oil and air filters, tire pressure, the cooling system, and proper wheel alignments.

a. FHWA-owned motor vehicles. The manufacturers’ recommended schedules and specifications should be followed. Proper maintenance can contribute to energy efficient operation and ensure that the motor vehicle will meet Federal and State emissions standards, which include safe and proper operation of the catalytic converter. (See 41 CFR 102-34.285.)

But, I find this type of low class school yard bullying & teasing to be the biggest weakness of the Republican Party. How can they expect anyone to ever take these bozos seriously again?

Only to the simple minded. Expand your horizon, try doing some critical thinking. mmK

Tim43 Says:

Seems to me that we should be weaning ourselves off of foreign oil by beginning to extract our own. Too bad pelosi and the democrats don’t see it that way.

Yeah, we’re not doing that now, are we, Timmeh?

If extracting our own were so damn important to the oil companies, it seems to me that they’d be working some of the 68 MILLION ACRES of public land to which they already hold lease. How about that for a start, hmm?

Then when they’re done there, THEN we can see where we’re at with alternative fuels, domestic production, and worldwide demand.

Sound good, Timmeh?

You left out one small but very important detail. Republicans are actually framing it as a demand issue. With China and India coming on line in full force, the supply will eventually shrink. While the supply may be their right now, will it be their in 5-10 years with the rampant rate of demand?

Seems to me that we should be weaning ourselves off of foreign oil by beginning to extract our own. Too bad pelosi and the democrats don’t see it that way.

Add to Obama’s idiocy, nancy pelosi shut the doors on the debate today when the republicans wanted to do the will of the people and vote to solve the oil crisis.

Folks, we have a crisis on our hands and all the democrats can do is tell us to fill our tires and then they run away to go on their five week vacations.

I thought that we voted them in to do the will of the people? Seems that the Republicans understand this because they stayed in the house even after pelosi kicked the reporters out. What was she trying to hide?

Gingrich is on to something. These folks really are looney tunes.

Gawd the way he twists words to suit his lie is sickening.

We hear constantly how people want to get cheaper gas yet do NOTHING about how much they consume. Well look, were destroying this planet because of the abundance of cheap oil! If we don’t create a market where we encourage consumers to use efficient technology that creates less CO2, then we as a species and the planet are in a boatload of trouble.

Republicans don’t want consumers to consume less oil because it will hurt their oil buddies, plain and simple!

But the Republicans are framing this as an issue of supply. And we aregue that drilling won’t solve the problem when it isn’t the problem.

Even if they lose on drilling, they win on the supply issue, and it’s nonsense.

But only if McCain would pick Newt for his VP. What a gas that would be !

Just for one, Newt made a circuit of speechs strongly expressing why he would suspend Free Speech in America. Yes, it was over terrorism !!!!

I can see it, “vote for me and forever keep your mouth shut”.

Heck! If the “librul media” were not a myth, we would be hearing nothing but glowing praise. Instead they fabricate complaints like presumption and criticism for taking a foreign trip he was double-dared to make. Then they insult their viewers further by suggesting the “media loves Obama”.

Give me a break! If the “librul media loved Obama”? Flippy McSpin would have been stripped of his delegates and forced to resign his Senate seat. The poor guy just continues to show, with each passing day, that he’s not qualified for any public office. But the “librul media” has failed to report his meltdown.

BTW. WHY DOES KATIE COURIC STILL HAVE A JOB?

To use an annnnalogy*, who are we going to believe — a guy who has research to show that losing weight is a combination of exercise, eating smaller portions, and eating the right foods… OR Mr. Snake-oil salesman Gingrich who says, take this magic pill and you’ll wake up 50lbs thinner in the morning!
__________________________________________________________

Unfortunately, we have all too many people in this country who would rather believe the snake oil salesman — which is why so many of them get elected.

Compare Jimmy Carter’s “there’s a finite amount of fossil fuels in this planet and we need to conserve it and wean ourselves off it” approach to Reagan’s “I’ll just tell everybody what they want to hear” approach.

Or compare FDR’s war where everybody in America sacrificed for it to Bush’s war where we were all told to go shopping.

Oh, and congratulations for getting past the TP filter!

Also note that Gingrich lied about what Obama said. Obama said that keeping tire pressure up and engines in tune would contribute “as much” as off-shore drilling. Gingrich lied and claimed that Obama had said it “would solve the problem. ” Since Obama’s point is that off shore drilling won’t solve the problem, Gingrich’s grotesque lie is, well about par for the course for Gingrich, but definitely a lie.

To use an annnnalogy*, who are we going to believe — a guy who has research to show that losing weight is a combination of exercise, eating smaller portions, and eating the right foods… OR Mr. Snake-oil salesman Gingrich who says, take this magic pill and you’ll wake up 50lbs thinner in the morning!

(*Stupid filter wouldnt let me spell that word correctly!)

Or do people here not find it strange, they just find it to be status quo?

Conservation must be a multi-faceted approach, and will require an ongoing effort on all our parts. Republicans don’t believe in contributing to a solution. They want people to believe they have a bright idea that will solve the problem in five minutes and they want credit for it. To mislead people into believing that off-shore drilling is going to solve the problem all by itself and by next week is simplistic and idiotic and just plain wrong. And if that isn’t looney tunes, I don’t know what is!