My first thoughts about all of this pertained to my current daily driver ('02 Z06 Corvette) and my oldest son's future daily driver ('10 Camaro). Both cars have tremendous performance but would never get close to the new requirements. The new Camaro might end up being the last of its breed.
This is not to say that this spells complete death for new performance cars, but
just to the kinds of cars we grew up on and what we're used to. Newer performance cars will eventually emerge that will blow away our mindset on alternative fuels and propulsion methods. In fact, internal combustion will most likely go away entirely in my lifetime (I'm 46).
SB100 is one (wacky) way of limiting the number of "exempted" cars from a smog inspection process
that is all about raising government revenues and not so much as to reducing pollutants in the air. I haven't had a car fail a smog inspection for at least the past 20 years, yet every two years I am subjected to this and have to pay for one. Get the picture???
I think we would be nieve for us to think that internal combustion mileage standards will go up dramatically, yet the "kit car" registration process (that largely still uses good old fashioned gas burners) would go unscathed? At least in Oz they are already forcing you guys to run Gen III SB Chevies in your cars, so you're already well ahead of the U.S. curve as it pertains to that aspect of all this.
As for my car? Well let's just say that I am slowly becoming the "white haired uncle" that Neil Peart wrote in his lyrics. And I will gladly race the "alloy air cars, two lanes wide" to the "one lane bridge" on Sundays, too.
-Dean