Obama has decreed that in 2016 new cars sold will have to get 39 mpg. Some people have asked me what that means. Well, for example, the so-called Smart Car (which carries two people in what is about like an enclosed golf cart) only gets 36 mpg. Obama expects "American Ingenuity" to produce cars that achieve that much mileage that everyone would like to drive. Like a lot of chief executives I have known, Obama has a problem grasping the laws of physics. I doubt that Americans are going to want to commute to work or go on trips in a glorified golf cart, and you certainly would not want to be in a collision in something like the Smart Car. Hybrids claim to get up around 50 mpg, but that is driving around town; they don't do as well on the highway. Volkswagen diesels get 50 mpg on the highway, but less in town. Obama claims that meeting the 39 mpg requirement will add only $1300 to the price of the car. Other more credible analyses that I have seen put the increased cost at $8000 per car. I think that is a good estimate because the most likely scenario is that many of the cars will be hybrids, or all electric. The mileage requirement is a fleet average, so presumably some of the individual cars could be like those sold today. But a lot of small light cars will have to be sold to get the average mileage up. I wonder if Obama plans on telling GM and Chrysler how many of each type of car to manufacture. The Soviet Union used to do that, but it didn't work out well for them. Of course, the One will no doubt be better at estimating how many of each type people will want to buy. I still think a lot of people will just keep driving the cars they now own. Consider Cuba; the communists took over there in 1959, and most of the cars on the road there are 1958 or older models. I saw a oil market analyst on TV tonight who predicted that there would soon be no gasoline refineries in the US. That would push the price of gasoline up enough to make the old cars useless. People who live close to Canada or Mexico might be able to cross the border to fill up, but I'm sure Obama can pass a law to stop that.