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How will rising gas prices effect people's car-buying choices?
Jonathan Rubin, Economics Professor, University of Maine: "President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act in December 2007. That raises fuel efficiency of cars and trucks by 40% by year 2020. So, we have on the books now a pretty good mandated increase, and the vehicle manufacturers get to decide how they do this. There's no sales mandate, it's a very flexible mechanism, but we have to get there. At the same time, in order to get there, consumers have to buy these vehicles, and so consumers need to think, "What do I really need that car or truck to do?" One thing that people probably are going to turn more to as incentive is saying, 'Well, I need that truck to haul my boat twice a year.' Maybe you can rent that truck from a supplier for the two or three or five times you really need that capacity, and the rest of the time you can get by on a smaller truck or a car. So, I think people need to think a bit more creatively about the vehicle that they really need for those tasks and not buy a vehicle for its single purpose of, 'it must do this on a very rare occasion.'"
