Michael McAuliff, Mouth Of The Potamac
and
Michael McAuliff, Mouth Of The Potamac
themouth@nydailynews.com

John McCain is mocking Barack Obama as full of hot air on energy policy for saying people should inflate their tires properly. But if you ask auto experts, Obama may have a 2.8 billion-gallon point.

First, though, a little perspective. Obama used the inflate tires line to mock McCain’s let’s-drill-more approach, which most experts say won’t produce any gasoline for 10 years. So McCain is now mocking the mockery as if that were Obama’s actual plan. Got it?

Now to the point. The best estimate we’ve heard for a gas tax holiday (part of McCain’s plan) is that it would save people about $70 (Obama says less). But if you’ve got under-inflated tires, said Dan Zielinski, of the rubber Manufacturing Association, who pointed us to data from NHTSA and California’s AAA and federal data, you could save yourself about $200 by pumping up your wheels. Is that a bad idea?

And if everyone did it, that’d be 2.8 billion gallons of gas. Nothing to sneeze at. And it’s free.

Rebuttal

America’s economy requires 20 million barrels of oil a day. 9 million barrels go to gasoline.

Tire inflation could improve gas mileage by 3.3%.

That would be 297,000 barrels a day.

Except most people already have their tires inflated properly. So the net savings would be smaller.

Figure 30% of the people will inflate their tires. That brings the savings to 90,000 barrels a day.

Or less than ½% of the 20 million barrels consumed each day.

That 90,000 barrels is a far cry from the 1 million to 2 million barrels a day expected from offshore oil.

Obama’s statement — “Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tuneups. You could actually save just as much” — is ridiculous.

Please read below for Federal Regs on tire inflation.

federal law and regulations.

It establishes a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard that requires the installation of tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMSs) that warn the driver when a tire is significantly under-inflated. The standard applies to passenger cars, trucks, multipurpose passenger vehicles, and buses with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less, except those vehicles with dual wheels on an axle.

This document establishes two compliance options for the short-term, for the period between November 1, 2003, and October 31, 2006. Under the first compliance option, a vehicle’’s TPMS must warn the driver when the pressure in any single tire or in each tire in any combination of tires, up to a total of four tires, has fallen to 25 percent or more below the vehicle manufacturer’’s recommended cold inflation pressure for the tires, or a minimum level of pressure specified in the standard, whichever pressure is higher. Under the second compliance option, a vehicle’’s TPMS must warn the driver when the pressure in any single tire has fallen to 30 percent or more below the vehicle manufacturer’’s recommended cold inflation pressure for the tires, or a minimum level of pressure specified in the standard, whichever pressure is higher. Compliance with the options would be phased in during that period by increasing percentages of production.

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